


It All Started When…

by Guede



Series: An Epic Beacon Hills Drama [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Hale Fire (Teen Wolf), Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, BAMF Stiles, Dubious Morality, F/M, Family Secrets, Gallows Humor, Hate Sex, Human Hale Family, Laura Hale Lives, M/M, Mystery, POV Derek Hale, Rough Sex, Slow Build Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Slow Burn, The Hale Family (Teen Wolf) Lives, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-15
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-12 08:32:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 38,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19225480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: It all started because Derek’s little sister could notstopgoing on and on about these psycho new transfers her senior year of high school.  Stilinski totally melted down half a lab bench in AP Chemistry and McCall was lifting vending machines with one hand to help wide-eyed little freshies to shake out bags of pretzels and they both had to be blackmailingsomebodybecause when those bloodstains were found in the back hallway and there was no way that was just leakage from cafeteria meat deliveries and they got caught back there and not evenone dayof suspension.So yeah.  It was all their fault what happened later.6/28/19:“Oh, makes sense,” she says, and before she kisses him this time, she hikes herself behind the gearshift between them.“I am both delighted and appalled by the complete lack of mainstream morality in this car,” says Stiles from the backseat.  He watches them yelp and break apart, and then holds up Allison’s bag where all the weapons are when Derek makes to reach around towards him.  Derek pulls back and Stiles grins.  “Okay, before you shoot me—”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This series is coming in 3-4 multi-chapter installments and Stiles/Peter is going to take a while to get going. Please note tags.

It all started because Derek’s little sister could not _stop_ going on and on about these psycho new transfers her senior year of high school. Stilinski totally melted down half a lab bench in AP Chemistry and McCall was lifting vending machines with one hand to help wide-eyed little freshies to shake out bags of pretzels and they both had to be blackmailing _somebody_ because when those bloodstains were found in the back hallway and there was no way that was just leakage from cafeteria meat deliveries and they got caught back there and not even _one day_ of suspension.

“So they’re just like,” Cora says, clicking her tongue against the back of her teeth for emphasis and then throwing up her hands. “Right? Right? Are you even listening to me?”

“No, niece, I’m trying to rewrite this contract into something that will actually stand up to scrutiny when my client inevitably fails his audit,” Peter mutters, staring at his tablet. He pokes irritably at the screen, then sags in his seat, sighing and drinking his coffee. Then he stops, pulls his mug away from his face, and frowns into it. “I don’t even know why I have minions if they can’t remember an Oxford comma…”

“Yes, dear, that’s mine with the agave,” Derek’s mom says, swanning over to the table. She swaps out Peter’s mug, smiles at his disgruntled expression, and then swoops around to lean over Cora’s shoulder. “Are those notes for your English final?”

Cora promptly stuffs the sheet down till it’s no longer sticking out of her binder. “No. And you’re not listening to me.”

“Of course I am. I am also well aware that you need at least a B-minus to pass that class and avoid summer school _after_ graduation, because one child with an allergy to college is enough,” their mother says. She smiles again, the way she does right before she’s about to verbally slice somebody, and stands over Cora till she reluctantly flips open the binder and shows a different page. “If your goal is to get out of this hellhole like you keep claiming, I really don’t see why you should be worrying about a pair of juvenile delinquents.”

“Yeah, well, it is, and I’m worried they’re going to murder somebody before I can graduate and get the whole school shut down and get that delayed,” Cora mutters.

Derek rolls his eyes. “They’re not going to hold up graduation just for two kids.”

“They will too. If they have to close the place for an investigation and send everybody home, state law says we’re already maxed out on missable days and they’re gonna have to extend the semester,” Cora shoots back.

Peter is still peering suspiciously at his new mug. “She’s right, Derek.”

Cora grins in triumph. Derek glowers at her, before remembering that one, he’s older, and two, he’s already graduated high school. “Shut up.”

“Don’t tell your sister to shut up.” Their mom wafts by Derek’s corner of the table, inhales like she’s going to ask about what’s on Derek’s phonescreen, and then sucks it back in and looks faintly sad when he flips his phone down. “Honey—”

“I said I’d go pick up the dry-cleaning today. And get all Cora’s graduation stuff, even though she’s already at the school,” Derek mutters. 

And maybe he should sound less pissy about it, but just because he’s taking a semester off and he’s sitting at his mom’s kitchen table doesn’t mean he’s allergic to college. Or a failure. He could live somewhere else if he felt like it, it’s not like he doesn’t have the money ( _which he earned himself_ ), and she was the one who suggested he come back while Peter sorted out that stuff with the dean.

“I know, and thank you,” his mother says, seriously, with that look in her eye that makes him roll his shoulders without thinking about it. She hesitates again, her head dipping like she’s going to drop a kiss on the top of his head, and then instead dusts off his shoulder as she turns back to the counter. “You know, I think Laura said there’s some kind of party at work, someone new’s starting at the hospital and it’s on the way home. You should—”

“It’s not a party, there’s a new doctor for the morgue, and she’s more like Peter’s age,” Derek says. Trying not to roll his eyes again, because it’s his mother.

“Oh?” Peter says, looking up.

Slightly behind his shoulder, looking way smugger than somebody one class away from a suspended diploma should be, Cora mimes like she’s batting her eyes and puckering up for somebody. Derek lifts one hand and makes a choking motion with it and she snorts, then goes back to shoveling her granola.

“Anyway, that’s probably why these two boys are getting away with it,” Derek’s mother says, abruptly annoyed. She snaps a folder as she slides it into her workbag. “I think one of them’s the son of that new deputy.”

Peter’s interest shifts over. “The one who ticketed me for double-parking in front of my own firm?”

Derek’s mom nods. She and Peter share a meaningful look, which basically translates to them staying out late at night and then getting whispered about the next time they show up at the annual charity day at the local country club, and then they both go back to what they were doing. Half the town thinks Derek’s family is just a bunch of incestuous psychopaths because Peter’s lived with them since a year after he graduated from law school and Derek’s father stopped showing up, so why the hell Cora’s so messed up about two kids pranking science lab is beyond Derek.

“Well, fine, since nobody cares if I survive to wear that stupid thing with the tassel anyway,” Cora mumbles, scooting back from the table, and Derek decides to _not_ just ignore her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oxford commas decide court cases! This is truth. Better to have than not.


	2. Chapter 2

It’s not that Derek actually thinks that his sister is in danger or anything like that. He’s positive she’s exaggerating, and anyway, even if there is any truth to it, Peter’s a lawyer and their mother is on the board of directors of the biggest bank in town and Laura works in the hospital. Between all of that, he’s pretty sure they’re covered.

Okay, he’s bored.

Most of the people his age have left town, and the ones who’ve stuck around are the ones he got detention for shoving into a locker for mouthing off about his family back in the day, so he doesn’t really have a busy social calendar. Which, by the way, he’s fine with, and really doesn’t need his mom suggesting he hang out with Laura’s friends, and it’s just that he _does_ have a sense of what it takes to be socialized and realizes he occasionally should stop wiping out other people’s Paypal accounts online and go outside. The high school is going to be easier to drop in and out of than the hospital.

Cora’s got lacrosse practice that can’t be stopped for five seconds for her to pick up her graduation gown and mortarboard, which can only be grabbed during a two-hour slot, and which, because she’s a shrimp, has to be new rather than reusing Laura’s. So around four-thirty that afternoon, Derek parks behind the school and wanders into the gym to get them.

“Oh, Derek!” says Allison Argent, eyes widening as she sees him.

Shit. Derek freezes on the threshold, thinking about turning around, and then gives himself a shake and remembers he’s a fucking adult now. Checking out Cora’s stupid outfit is going to take five minutes and he can manage that even if her annoying best friend is going to flirt with him the entire time so her parents pick another fight with his mom at the bank’s annual nonprofit gala. 

Five minutes, he tells himself, and walks up to the table. “I’m getting Cora’s—”

“Yup, got it,” Allison says, flipping him a smile as she turns around to face the double row of rolling racks behind the table. Her hair’s up in a ponytail and he has to take a step back so it doesn’t flick him in the nose, it’s so long. Almost down to her ass.

Derek presses his lips together and looks away. Not because he feels guilty, because honestly, her skirt’s coming up to meet that ponytail, but because he can’t believe he’s back in this gym, checking out teenagers. What was even the point of waking up early all those mornings for basketball practice if he can’t get out of this town?

“Right here, and if you can just sign that while I get the right tassel out,” Allison says, coming back to the table. She drapes the plastic-wrapped robe over the table and then dips a little lower, her hand going under the robe for a second before she slides a piece of paper out from under it. “I don’t think she’s got any of the special ones, but I’ll double-check just to make sure.”

“Fine,” Derek mutters. He moves up a little, but keeps his hands tucked inside his coat till she pushes off the table. 

She looks disappointed they’re not going to get to touch hands, but that doesn’t stop her from doing a showy pivot that stretches her skirt across her buttocks as she digs into some boxes under the table. “Nice of you to come. Guess Cora’s too busy for this kind of thing?”

Derek shrugs and pulls the sheet over. Something whines behind him and he glances back, then goes back to the sheet when he realizes it’s just the other set of doors. He fills out Cora’s name and checks off the gown, tassel…he frowns at the column for ‘cap.’ Then reaches over and pulls up the gown to find the cap in its own plastic bag, which has been stabbed through with the hook of the gown’s hanger.

“Well, winning the state championship would be a perfect way to end senior year, so I can’t blame her,” Allison goes on, her head bobbing up and down the level of the table as the boxes rustle. “Hey, so are you going to the last game?”

“Probably,” Derek says. He checks off ‘cap’ too and tugs the gown over, then grabs the handle and starts rolling the gown around it. He’s already stuck here for the rest of the summer, he’s damn well not going to start driving around with his sister’s shit hanging in his backseat like he’s okay with it.

“Want me to save you a seat in our section?” Allison asks.

Too late Derek sees where that’s going and makes a face at the gown’s wrapper. The stuff is somehow clingy and slippery at the same time, and when he goes to swing the rolled-up gown under his arm, half of it pulls out of the roll so he has to drop it back on the table. “No.”

Allison stands up with a small baggie in her hand. She frowns at Derek, like she just doesn’t get it, and then snorts. “Dad’s not even in town that week, you know. He’ll be up in Oregon trying to tie up some stuff with my aunt’s estate.”

“Still doesn’t mean I’m going to sit with you so your mom can hatchet my uncle’s car window again,” Derek says, looking up. And smiling now.

She wouldn’t be Cora’s friend if she was really as airheaded as she likes to pretend, and she shows it in the sarcastic way she flicks the bagged tassel at him. “Okay, listen, you and I both know that was really more about _your_ uncle getting my dad arrested for guns he has an actual, legit license to sell. Not about me or you.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t see why either of us want to deal with that again,” Derek says. Her aim’s perfect, dead-center for his chest except he snags the bag first. “Don’t you have better things to do than to annoy them? Like parties or something, before you head off to college?”

A flicker of something deeper than just annoyance passes over Allison’s face. “I’m staying local,” she says, her voice dropping slightly.

Derek blinks. She’s better at sports than Cora—archery, good enough there was a rumor she might be trialing for the U.S. Olympics team—and if Cora can get a full ride to one of the UC outposts (depending on that English class), Derek figures Allison is a shoo-in.

Not, he thinks, that it’s either his business or something he cares about. So he gives her a blank, bored stare till Allison, hurt creasing her forehead, tucks her arms around herself and lifts her chin. “Well, I guess you’re all set then,” she says, with a little edge to her voice. “Tell Cora I’ll be over later to help with English? You know, so she can actually graduate with the rest of us? Since apparently, tutoring’s not a big enough deal to get anybody’s car trashed.”

The funny thing is, Allison and Cora really are friends, as far as anyone can tell. They’ve been friends since middle school, before the whole feud really got going, and nobody’s ever so much as said so but everybody kind of regards that as untouchable. And things have calmed down since Kate Argent died in that weird accident up in Washington, when Derek’s mom and uncle were both down here in town, but it’d gotten pretty damn intense. There were times when Derek honestly didn’t know what he would have done if Chris or Victoria Argent had crossed his path, but Allison and Cora…just compartmentalized, or something.

“Hey, so, this a line? Should I take two?” says a new, male voice.

Derek twitches, then twists around, annoyed with himself. “What?”

“Two? Take two? As in line numbers, because you and…me and…yeah, okay, the moment is way past gone,” sighs the guy. He’s one of two himself, lanky in flannel over last year’s SDCC t-shirt with a red-brown scrub on his head. The guy peeking around his shoulder’s slightly more built with less obviously geeky clothes and dark curls. “Anyway, we’re kind of running late for something so if you don’t mind…”

“Hi, Stiles,” Allison says, sounding wary. As Derek steps back to let the two guys pass him, she stays where she is. She eyes the other guy a little less, but it’s still cautious, even after he gives her a friendly smile. “Scott. Picking up?”

“You know it,” this Stiles says, leaning over the table and resting one elbow by the sign-out sheet. “Gimme those tassels. Can’t wait to tie them all over Scotty’s bike, show everybody we done gone _made_ it.”

Three corny accents in a minute. This kid is weird, Derek is thinking, and then Stiles spins on his heel and aims his pen at Derek like he’s going to diagram Derek’s anatomy. Derek feels his brows shoot up, while the other guy, who’d been about to say something to Allison, grimaces and grabs Stiles’ shoulder.

Doesn’t stop the guy. “Oh, wait, you’re the _Hale_.”

“What?” Derek says.

Stiles looks expectantly at Derek, eyes round as a headlight-struck deer, and then he grins and turns back around. “Okay, so two gowns, two caps, and Scott should have the gold-braided tassel.”

“Don’t forget yours, for honor roll,” Scott says, relaxing the hand he’s got on Stiles’ shoulder with obvious relief.

“Honor roll?” Allison blurts out skeptically. Then she ducks her head, tucking her hair back behind one ear, and scoots towards the rack. She’s weirdly polite sometimes, considering her parents.

“Yeah, honor roll. Still debating whether I wanna bother blowing past Danny for the valedictorian slot or now,” Stiles says, now tapping his pen against the table. He’s jiggling his right leg too. “I mean, I’m pretty sure everybody wants him and he’ll do a good speech and all, but mine would be _so_ much more memorable.”

“Stiles,” Scott mutters, tightening down on Stiles’ shoulder again. Then he seems to remember Derek and he looks up. His expression—it’s not embarrassed, Derek gets that much before he suddenly shifts to a slightly nervous smile. “Sorry, we are kind of in a rush. Do you—”

“Oh, no, got you both coming up,” Allison mutters, shoving two sets of gowns onto the table. She’s backing away before they’re fully down, and has to shake her hands free of the clingwrap before she can get at the boxes of tassels. “Danny’s been leading the GPA since halfway through sophomore year, even with his mom having that cancer scare. And he’s head of the Honor Society, and offers free math tutoring to the middle school once a week.”

Stiles paws at the gowns, nodding in time with Allison’s curt little rundown as if she’s singing his favorite pop song. “Mmmmhmmm, nice guy, totally see that. So Cora ever going to pay me back?”

“What?” Derek says again.

“Man of few words, I see,” Stiles says, rolling his eyes.

“It’s okay,” Scott says to Derek, for some reason, and then he yanks at Stiles’ shoulder. It looks pretty hard from where Derek is standing but Stiles doesn’t move an inch and the guy’s slightly slouched so he looks like a paper straw dissolving in the middle. “It’s fine, I got her.”

Allison drops two tassel bags on the table and then pulls her hands back. “She barely knows you,” she says, frowning at Scott.

Scott shoots her a look like—like she should know better, something like that, and Allison’s frown gets even more confused. Then Stiles shoulders Scott aside, scooping up the tassels with one hand. “Ah, I kid, I kid. No payment necessary,” he says, glancing from Allison to Derek. He’s grinning again and something about it is off. “I’m just an altruist at heart. Just call me Batman.”

“Batman does it because his parents got shot and he never got over it, not because he really feels like helping people,” Derek says.

Stiles goes still. It’s…what the hell is _off_ , Derek wants to know. It’s not like Stiles looks that—that terrifying, or terrible. Usual orthodontist-straight teeth, freckles on his cheeks, wouldn’t look out of place as a Boy Scout cover boy. And yet the hair on Derek’s nape is prickling.

“Look, if you’re going to make a big deal out of it,” Allison suddenly breaks in, and when Stiles turns to her, she’s tossing a ten-dollar bill on the table. “Here. I’ll just—”

“I was really kidding,” Stiles says after a second. His tone’s…unusual, not really sad or mocking or angry. 

His expression isn’t really much of anything, and after another second, he shrugs and picks up the bill. Glances at Scott, then hikes the gowns over one shoulder and strolls off towards the parking-lot doors.

“Sorry about that,” Scott says, exhaling deeply, like this happens a lot and like he wishes every time he’d gotten in between Stiles and whatever first. “We just had a run-in with Harris.”

“Well, you did kind of melt his desk,” Allison mutters. “I hate that guy, and I can’t really blame him for having it out for you.”

Scott looks like he can’t really blame her either, which means Allison starts to look uneasy about her self-righteousness. He sighs again, rubs at the side of his neck and checks Derek for something, and then takes a step after Stiles. Then pauses and looks at Derek again.

“He doesn’t really care about your sister,” Scott says, like that’s reassuring. “Anyway, good to meet you.”

“Not really,” Derek says.

Scott stops mid-stride and tilts his head. Just for a second, before his hips finish the twist and he’s heading out too, but there’s something off about him too. In the same way as with Stiles, Derek thinks—same freaky feeling under Derek’s skin, even though he’s positive neither of them meant to do it.

Mostly because he doesn’t think either of them is thinking that much about him. He just gets this weird feeling he’s the sideshow, which is…not usually his role. “What the hell was that about?”

“Ask Cora,” Allison says, unexpectedly curt. Then her eyes widen. She starts what might actually be a curse under her breath, then hastily raises her hand. “Derek—”

“Yeah, good point,” Derek says, leaving.

* * *

“How should I know?” Cora grumbles when Derek asks her later that night. “Look, Allison’s my friend, that doesn’t mean I know everybody she’s talking to.”

Derek grits his teeth. Sometimes, if he’s honest with himself, he thinks she’s harder to deal with than Peter. At least when Peter’s being difficult, it’s because he’s trying to hide something that really, really needs to be hidden. “This isn’t about the fucking fighting, okay? I’m just asking because that kid said you owed him, and—”

“I _don’t_. He’s just delusional. Which, if you’d been listening to what I’ve been saying since he and McCall got here, you’d already know,” Cora says, just before she pulls her shirt over her head.

Cursing, Derek ducks around the door to her room. “Would you _stop_ doing that? Don’t you think it’s bad enough with Mom and Peter—”

“Oh, it’s _never_ bad enough, not when I’m around,” Peter drawls, coming up the stairs. He must be just in from work, because his tie’s still around his neck, even though it’s pulled out of its knot. “And what are the children up to?”

Derek looks at him. Silence from the room.

“You know I’m going to find out, and not so much because I’m such a fine detective—though I am—as because you are both spectacularly terrible at secrets,” Peter says. He lingers in the hallway, absently fingering the bundle of folders under his arm, and then sighs theatrically as he turns into the dogleg that leads to his bedroom. “Very well, then, carry on and I’ll deduct it from your legal-defense fund later.”

Cora mumbles in her closet. Probably something along the lines of, she’ll go live in Canada first.

“Oh, one thing?” Peter says, stopping with his hand on the doorknob. “Derek?”

“ _What_ ,” Derek spits out before he can help himself. “What? I’ve been staying in! I’ve been staying in so much that Mom’s trying to set me up with—”

“I was just going to ask whether you could remember to use your burner phone when you’re talking to your Vegas friends. It’s very disconcerting to have someone call the landline and say they’re so glad you’re all right, they hadn’t heard from you in so long they’d thought you were buried in the desert,” Peter says. His head moves slightly up, and then he goes into his room.

Derek runs his hand over his face, then yanks his phone out to check his messages. And then almost drops it because Cora’s standing in the doorway and wearing a _skirt_.

“I thought you weren’t part of the Mafia,” she says. She’s got a top on, when his eyes go up. It’s tight and skimpy, so he can’t say that the view has improved.

“I thought you were thinking you were into girls,” he says.

Cora shoves him in the chest. “Get woke, asshole. There’s a whole rainbow for that.”

He steps back, and then thinks of something. “Allison said she was coming over—”

“She is, and it’s not her. It’s Erica Reyes,” Cora mutters, sidling past him. Thankfully, she’s also putting on a jacket at the same time. “Nope, Ally’s still stuck on dick-swinging, not that you’re ever going to make it worth her time.”

“Well, what, did you want me to? I thought we were trying to leave all that shit to the generation before us,” Derek mutters.

He follows Cora back downstairs to the back porch. It’s far enough into spring that they put up the mosquito netting last week, but still cool enough that Cora switches on the space heater before she drops into one of the wicker chairs. Her books and laptop are spread out over the table, and one of Mom’s snack platters is perched on the corner with a pitcher and three glasses.

“That’s Laura, and sure, she can say that now that she’s a month away from qualifying for a transfer across the state,” Cora mutters back. She takes her phone out and snaps a photo of herself, stretching her neck and shoulders so her cleavage pops out of her jacket, and then snickers at Derek’s averted eyes. “Oh, c’mon, Mom doesn’t even care. She hugs Peter extra when we’re downtown just so she can see whether she can get somebody to run over the curb.”

“You know this is really fucked-up,” Derek says, without heat in it.

Cora nod-shrugs and texts the photo to someone. She chews her lip a little, a sure tell she’s genuinely nervous, and then rubs at her nose, a tell that she’s not even going to remotely admit to it. “Look, it wasn’t a big deal, Stiles is just a weirdo. I needed ten dollars and he got it for me.”

“I got that,” Derek says.

Her phone pings with a reply and she fumbles it a little, letting it slide through her fingers before hooking the bottom with her thumb. She frowns at the screen, then starts to text again. Then stops and puts her phone down on her stomach and looks up at him. “Do you have to do that? Every time?”

Derek looks her dead in the eyes.

“You’re a dick,” she tells him, zipping up her jacket.

“I just thought you didn’t want them to get the school closed,” he says. “You friends now?”

“No, _God_ ,” Cora says defensively. She fidgets with her phone, then shoves it into her phone. “They’re gonna get somebody killed, for real. I just—Erica wanted a double-decker, okay? And she only just agreed to start hanging with me. I think Boyd told her some bullshit about what happened when the team boobytrapped the guys’ lockers.”

This probably all makes sense, if Derek thinks hard enough about the random stuff he’s heard about Cora doing from Laura and Mom, but he doesn’t really want to bother. Also, he knows from experience that he doesn’t need this part to hang together.

“Anyway, so because of that I’m out of cash when Ally and I are pulling out of the mall, and Ally accidentally dropped the parking ticket so they’re charging us the full day rate, even though it was the same jerk in the booth and Ally’s only got two bucks because her mom’s being a tightwad and I don’t even know where they came from,” Cora suddenly rambles, sticking her legs straight out in front of her and slouching so that her skirt’s riding up, not in a sexy way, more like she put it on wrong-end first. “They just popped out—they weren’t even in a car, whatever, and Stiles is like, look, here’s ten and just let them go and then we gotta borrow you for a second and they were probably doing a drug deal.”

Derek snorts. “A drug deal?”

“Well, dress like what you are, right?” Cora says. “Stiles wears enough flannel, at least.”

He looks at her. She wiggles, annoyed, and then pushes herself back up and straightens out her skirt. “What, you don’t think so?”

“No,” Derek says.

He really doesn’t. He—through no fault of his own, and in fact, a lot of trying very hard to avoid it, because his family brings him enough issues—has known a couple real dealers, and those two just don’t fit. Actual dealers are either doing their own product and barely more together than their most-addicted clients, or they’re lowkey businessmen. He wasn’t getting that feel off either Stiles or Scott.

Shifty, sure, he thinks. But he doesn’t think the show is to try and lure anybody in. “So what happened after that?”

“What do you mean, what happened? I didn’t want Peter and Allison’s dad to end up in jail again with the moms traumatizing another sheriff so I made Ally get us the hell out of there, and I don’t know what happened after that. It was pretty close to closing time anyway,” Cora says. Then she looks up at him. “Why do _you_ care, anyway? Are you going to stalk them or something?”

“Fuck off,” Derek says, and goes back into the house.

* * *

Honestly, Derek’s going to drop it. He was, and still is, bored, but he can find ways of dealing with that that don’t involve spying on teenage criminals. But then Laura brings Scott McCall and his mother home for dinner.

Laura eats over every Thursday night, even when she’s supposed to be technically on call (the hospital has a line of credit at the bank) and it’s not that unusual for her to bring a coworker or two home. It is for semi-stupid reasons, because Beacon Hills General is a regional center of excellence and so can pull in out-of-towners and somehow, Laura thinks if she introduces enough non-locals, their family will be…not their family. She usually can’t get people to come to more than two dinners.

“That’s not how a living will works,” Melissa McCall says, politely but firmly, as she helps herself to more steak.

“Oh?” Peter says, brows rising in a way that makes Laura grab convulsively at the wine. “I had no idea coroners had to be such experts in that type of thing. I would have thought you were a little too downstream in the process, so to speak.”

“Not really. I’ve had a couple wake up in the drawer on really busy nights,” this Melissa says, like that’s absolutely something somebody will say while slicing into an especially bloody steak.

Derek’s mom exchanges a glance with Derek, then clears her throat. He jerks, not sure what the hell _he_ was supposed to do (he’s old enough to know better than to open his mouth when Peter’s running an argument), and her cheeks puff out the way she does when she’s swallowing back a sigh. “I’m so sorry, that one must have come off early,” she says, pushing up and reaching for the steak plate. “I can just—”

“Hmm? Oh, no, it’s fine,” Melissa says, looking up. Her face is slightly quizzical as she forks up the piece she’s just cut off, dips it in the pool of chimichurri sauce, and pops it into her mouth. She chews a few times, then smiles. “Laura said you were an excellent cook, and she definitely wasn’t telling tales. It’s so tender! What is that in the marinade—the sweet part? Some kind of juice?”

“Pear juice,” Derek’s mom says, blinking hard. She stays as she is, awkwardly half-standing, and then sits back down. Her fingers fan a little as she puts them back on the table and Derek senses Peter shifting in his seat. “Well, so…you’ve got some legal training? Oh, I’m sorry—I don’t mean to patronize, of course in your line of work—”

“Um, do you mind if I use the bathroom?” Scott asks Derek, in a low, slightly stiff voice, his eyes on their mothers.

“Yeah, we deal with a lot of lawyers,” Melissa says, cutting off more steak. “So what kind of law do you do, Peter? Your website bio made it sound like a lot of corporate, but I know how marketing goes.”

Peter’s leaning close when he passes her the sauce bowl, and it’s not because he’s flirting. It’s Derek’s mom who speaks next, though, with a little edge: “You looked him up?”

“I’ll show you,” Derek says, and ignores the desperate looks Laura’s throwing his way. She’s the one who brought them home.

He walks Scott out of the dining room and takes him to the stairs rather than into the back through the kitchen—Cora and Allison and Erica left before the McCalls came, but he doesn’t know for what and he knows if Cora’s coming back, it’ll be via the porch—to the upstairs one. “Thanks,” Scott says, trotting up the stairs.

That one hasn’t really said too much, other than to answer a couple questions from Derek’s mom about whether he and Cora had classes together and which ones. He wasn’t really looking anywhere but his plate, and Derek got the strong impression that Scott also would have preferred dinner somewhere else. His mother, on the other hand…

Derek edges into the hall enough to see that Melissa is still talking, with enough gusto that she’s moving her fork around in the air. His mom’s got her chin propped up on her hand, looking like she’s listening, which really means she really, really dislikes this woman.

“Where did your sister go?” Peter says, and then looks amused when Derek starts. “You’ve lost all peripheral vision since you went to college, I swear.”

“We’re at home, do you have to do—why?” Derek says, eyeing his uncle. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing, I just think she’s better at tracking down rumors than you are,” Peter says, off-hand, glancing over his shoulder at the dining room. He pauses and Derek can see his shoulderblades rise against his shirt as his back tenses. And then he lets out an irritated grunt. “And clearly, she and Laura have made up since last week if she’s the only one who gets the advance warning.”

“I don’t think she knew Laura was bringing them either, she already had something planned,” Derek says after a second.

Peter does not believe a bit of it, says his face. “Well, at any rate, if this is what your _older_ sister thinks is a good role model, I…Derek.”

His uncle’s looking at something behind Derek. Based on his tone, Derek backs up against the wall before turning around. Grabs the nearest heavy thing to hand too, which turns out to be a decorative hall chair.

“Not that one, we can’t patch the embroidery anymore,” Peter says casually as he goes past Derek.

He walks past a vase and a wrought-iron sculpture hanging on the wall, so whatever it is, Derek guesses it doesn’t require violence. Derek still loosens up his shoulders as he follows the other man down the hall and around the corner to the old den, which Peter used to use as an office before Derek’s mother finally let him convert part of the library. The door’s closed, but Peter pushes it open and then stands in the hall, looking in. After a second, when he doesn’t move or speak, Derek comes up next to him.

Everything looks fine, so far as Derek can tell. “I thought the light went on,” Peter says when Derek looks at him. He’s staring intently at the window, which is shut. “I thought I saw some coming out from under the door…”

“Should we walk around the house?” Derek asks.

Peter finally goes into the room, but not to the window like Derek had been expecting. Instead he goes around the desk and frowns at the old file cabinets still lining the wall there. He runs his finger across the top of one, then abruptly grabs at his face—oh, he’s just stifling a sneeze. Some dust is coming off the cabinet.

“Filthy. Cora should do something about it when she gets home,” Peter mutters, coming back out.

“Sure, if you can get her,” Derek says.

“And why would that be _my_ job?” Peter says without turning around.

Derek watches him walk back towards the dining room, wishing his uncle would just—and then bites it back. Just tries to be glad it’s just a false alarm.

Somebody rattles down the stairs and Derek whips around, then nearly lunges at Scott anyway, _after_ he’s realized who it was.

“Sorry,” Scott says, puffing a little. He’s flushed in the face too, and swinging his arms down from…like he’d just been jogging.

“Get lost?” Derek snorts.

Scott looks sheepish. “Sort of. Your house is really big.”

“Yeah,” Derek says. They stare at each other. “You waiting for an invitation?”

Scott moves his shoulders back. It’s not quite a shrug, a little too fluid, and somehow Derek finds his eye tracking back across the man’s chest and down one arm. There’s some real muscle under the clothes, enough to pull the seam when it’s flexed enough. “Sorry,” Scott says, ducking his head, then twisting around. “Didn’t mean to take so long.”

Derek doesn’t say anything to that, just follows the other man back. He doesn’t sit down when he gets there, just picks up his plate and utensils and glass and takes them into the kitchen. There’s another bottle of wine sitting by the sink and once he’s washed up his things, he uncorks that and brings it out. His mother and Laura both look grateful; he gets an accidental glimpse of Melissa McCall’s face when he’s leaning over to hand his mother the bottle, because his thigh pulls at the tablecloth and he pulls up short, not wanting everything to come sliding off, and she’s looking at Scott who’s looking out the window into the backyard. 

They both look like they’re waiting for something, and not just a fake emergency call from a friend waiting outside. Derek hands the bottle to his mother and then checks Peter, who is watching Melissa. So it _should_ be handled.

* * *

The next day, Derek takes a walk around his house. It rained a couple days ago, hard, and the ground is still a little soft. He doesn’t see anything under the windows or in the grass, and of course when he asks, Peter irritably tells him the security system didn’t pick up anything either. Peter’s cranky, working from home but taking a lot of calls, and Derek gets the impression that one of his deals with City Hall is blowing up so Derek doesn’t ask any follow-ups.

“Went okay,” Cora says, when Derek asks about her date. She’s back in her usual hoodie and jeans, looking like a creased marshmallow on the couch. “Going out again Saturday.”

“Nobody else showed up, did they?” Derek asks.

Cora looks up. “Like who? This about dinner? Laura told me about that shitshow.”

Derek shrugs and sits down in the armchair across from her to check his phone. He’s got a couple calls he needs to return, if he wants to have his seats locked for anything in the next month. He’s not sure things with the university will be cleared up by then, but—he’d have to talk to Peter about that, and he doesn’t want to have to talk to Peter again today. But he wants to stop sitting in this fucking house, not knowing whether he’s going back or whether he’s just got to stop staring at that door and find another one. It’s not like he thinks he’ll be here forever—he knows he can get out. He knows he’s got the skills. He knows that.

“Stiles’ dad is the interim sheriff now,” Cora says suddenly. When he looks over at her, she’s pulled herself up and is hunching over her knees, staring at him. “You heard about that, right?”

“No,” Derek says. 

“There was some kind of fight down at the mall, and the sheriff got smacked in the head. They say he’s concussed so he’s off work for a week, at least, and Stiles’ dad is stepping in,” Cora says, intent on him, like this is more than just what passes for frontpage news in this size of a town. “He came into school once, after the lab melted down. Ally went by the front office and she saw him coming out with the principal, and she says the guy was white in the face. The principal.”

Derek rolls his eyes. The principal’s the same one he had, and that guy wasn’t exactly a light bulb. Okay, he guesses, but he always got so twitchy around Peter he’d forget about Derek’s mom.

“But he’s pretty hot, apparently. Stiles’ dad,” Cora adds. “When he’s not getting Stiles _not_ expelled for literally creating a hazardous-waste clean-up site.”

“Why do you care?” Derek asks.

Cora starts to say something sarcastic, then stops herself. She looks down, then up, and then she pushes her legs down so that she’s leaning on her knees rather than hugging them. “They’re looking for something, Stiles and Scott. Maybe Stiles’ dad too. Stiles told some of the football jocks they’d be lucky if anybody found the pieces because his dad likes the night shift, so he knows where _all_ the places where you can’t hear somebody screaming are.”

“Looking for what? Prison?” Derek says.

“Why do _you_ care?” Cora asks.

He does, Derek starts, and then he makes a face. Then he gets up off the armchair. “I just want to know this doesn’t have anything to do with us. He said—”

“Which?” Cora says, also getting up.

“Stiles,” Derek says. He looks at her and she fronts up to him like she seriously thinks she could take him, if he tries to make her stay behind. Which he’s not going to, because she’s his little sister and a pain and if he did, she’d be so bitchy about it he’d end up caving. “He said something to me when I was getting your cap and gown. So I don’t know if it was just a random mindfuck but I just…want to know. And I don’t have anything else to do.”

“Okay,” Cora says simply. She falls in alongside him for a few steps before taking out her phone and texting somebody. “Ally’s gonna meet us—”

“Ally?”

Cora grimaces. “She’s kind of into Scott now. Kind of.”

“What, to piss off her parents?” Derek says.

“What, jealous?” Cora says.

Derek doesn’t even bother responding to that. He leaves a note on the fridge for their mother and Peter and Cora shoots off some texts to Laura to set up a story about dragging Derek out of the house, and then they take his car.

“They got paired up for AP Bio a couple weeks ago and apparently he’s really nice, when he’s not busy trying to keep Stiles from murdering the world,” Cora says, wrinkling her nose. “Also his mother had some sort of run-in with her parents—she was calling to follow up on the car incident and Ally’s mom got ticked off and Scott’s mom is feisty or whatever—”

“If she’s a coroner, why is she doing the follow-up on that? Nobody actually died with that one, there just were bloodstains like somebody had, but it was that deer her dad had shot,” Derek says.

“Well, supposedly, the one before Scott’s mom fucked up all the files so she’s straightening them out, and that’s probably what Ally’s mom said to her,” Cora says, with a sideways look at Derek. “Anyway, Scott came over to apologize for it, except Ally’s dad was there and threatened him and then Ally felt bad. She gets those guilt trips, right, so…”

Derek snorts. “So you two have been stalking them?”

“Which is exactly what you’re doing with your Friday night,” Cora snorts right back. “So, anyway, Stiles and Scott hang out a lot in the preserve by the firepits. Stiles _says_ they’re birding.”

“What the hell is birding?” Derek says. “Like they kill them?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is one of those stories where I end up weighing tagging against spoilers. I personally like surprise plot twists, so am not tagging for a few things.
> 
> Lacrosse is actually more popular for girls than boys, so if the female Hales are going to dominate a sport, that seems like the logical one. 
> 
> Allison and her family have always lived in town in this universe.


	3. Chapter 3

“No, you do counts of species, and then you share the records so that scientists can get a better idea of population levels and migration patterns,” Allison explains on their second night of stalking Stiles and Scott.

The first night had washed out because Stiles and Scott hadn’t shown, and Allison had been more awkward than usual around Derek because she hadn’t been flirting. At least, not the way she usually did, like her dad was waiting around the corner and she was only holding back till he walked around it. She’d still smiled when she didn’t have to, and looked at Derek when she hadn’t thought he was looking, but they had had a whole conversation about the weird things Allison and Cora had thought they’d almost-seen Stiles and/or Scott doing, rather than what Derek could be doing with her. It’d been odd.

It still is odd, but on night two, Derek is starting to think he can deal with this version of Allison without wanting to punch himself every time he notices she was attractive out of sheer _and then Peter’ll tell you he knew you were a sucker like that_. Also, Cora hadn’t come along this time, which…should have made it worse, but actually seemed to make it easier, without her making stabbing gestures every time Derek got too curt with Allison.

“I would’ve thought this would be a great night for it. Nice clear sky and the moon’s almost full,” Allison says, and then she grimaces. “Well, obviously it’s just an excuse.”

Cora’s not with them because after the first night failed, they figured out one of them should take the car back out of the preserve and park it where it’s not the only fucking one in the visitor lot. And as much as it kills Derek to turn over his keys, he’s not going to let his little sister and her best friend sit alone at night in the preserve, even if Cora has pepper spray and lungs like an opera singer and Allison has a really intimidating-looking crossbow.

“You know about this from hunting?” Derek says, nodding at said crossbow.

“Kind of. I mean, it’s more like…birders mostly aren’t the hunting type. And it’s not like we are either, it’s just—since there aren’t wolves or many other big predators anymore, something has to keep down the deer population, and Mom and Dad are both big believers in taking care of your land.” Allison shrugs, then pulls her coat closer around herself. It’s a little cold, with a stiff breeze that whistles through the trees every now and then. “Grandfather left us a lot of acreage, when he died. When cull season’s on, Dad just camps out there for a few weeks. I go for the first week, but even I can’t stay the whole time.”

“At least you go,” Derek mutters. He checks his phone, but Cora’s last status update is still there, telling him nothing’s going down the road.

It takes him a second to realize that Allison’s looking at him. He almost doesn’t look up, thinking it’s just her teenage-rebel-crush again, and then she sighs and something about it is so frustrated that he lifts his head.

“I usually don’t tell guys. They get grossed out—but they want to hear about it anyway, like I’m an alien instead of a girl because I help cut up the deer. Well, they’ll _rot_ otherwise, and at least we make sure the meat gets used. If we can’t eat it, we send it to a food bank,” Allison says, staring off to the side. She pulls at her coat again. “Is that really so weird?”

“You’re taking care of what you’ve got. I think that is weird to a lot of people, but then whatever, they all think my mother and my uncle are fucking,” Derek says. “So what the hell do they know?”

Allison looks at him again, and not with that morbid curiosity most people get. “I heard that one, but—even Mom doesn’t buy it, and she’s really got it in for Peter.”

“And Mom,” Derek mutters.

“Mostly Peter,” Allison says. She shrugs when Derek looks at her. “I think…in a weird, hostile way, she understands why your mom’s so protective. But Peter just—do you even know why he hates my dad so much?”

“He doesn’t hate your dad,” Derek says, frowning. Then shakes his head when Allison looks skeptical. “He doesn’t. Your dad just annoys Peter because he won’t stop—but if he really hated the guy, he’d be dead. Honestly, sometimes I think Peter is confused that your dad just won’t let it go, whatever the hell went down with him and my mom.”

“Your mom?” Allison says, and now she looks confused. “Dad didn’t do anything to your mom. He always says he doesn’t know why your mom has it out for him—”

A long, eerie sound threads through the trees around them. It’s definitely not the wind and chills run up and down Derek’s spine, even after his fingers close around the machete he’d brought out with him. Which Allison had taken a good long look at, and then not looked at again since they’d sat down by the firepit farthest into the woods.

Allison gets cautiously to her feet, clicking on the light that’s clamped to her crossbow. Then steps back, nudging into Derek so that their backs are both to the nearest tree. Derek lifts his flashlight too and they sweep out in opposite directions, only to find empty woods.

“That sounded like a wolf,” Allison says after several tense seconds have gone by. She doesn’t relax.

“Are there wolves here now? I thought they were further north,” Derek mutters.

“Yeah, they are,” Allison says under her breath. She’s sweeping slowly back with the light.

Derek’s phone buzzes. They both jump and Allison jerks her crossbow down, sucking breath through her teeth, as it twangs. Then she jerks it back up, squinting into the beam streaming from her light.

“Lost it. Damn,” she finally says. “Hope the rangers don’t get mad.”

“Cora says Peter’s asking Laura when we’re coming back from the party,” Derek says. He shoves his phone back in his pocket and then takes his flashlight out from under his arm. “I think we should call it a night.”

“Sure,” Allison says, sounding tired.

It’s a ten-minute walk back to where Cora can pick them up in the car, and it’s not really surprising that they get there before she does. Neither of them had said anything along the way, but once they’re standing in the empty lot, with its lone, switched-off light pole, Allison takes out her phone and starts doing some searches.

“Well, no sightings nearer than a hundred miles but wolves can really travel when they want to,” she says, like she knows. Then she laughs a little, nervously, and shows him her phonescreen. “Or so the California Department of Fish and Wildlife tells me. But maybe it was a coyote. Those never really left, and—”

“Definitely not a coyote,” says Stiles. And then he ducks the flashlight that Allison, not screaming but hissing her breath again, throws at him.

Somebody catches it, with a groaned ‘Stiles!’ and then Scott reluctantly steps forward. His eyes widen when he sees the machete Derek is pointing at him and he immediately raises his hands. “Hey! Hey, we’re just—we’re just—we’re birding!”

“Oh, my God, they’re not going to buy that one, not with Hawkeye, Kate Bishop edition, and Danny Trejo there,” Stiles says, rolling his eyes. He turns around and takes the flashlight from Scott, who’s still got his hands up, and then saunters up to Allison. He dangles the flashlight over the crossbow—not reloaded yet—that she’s pointing at him, then shrugs when Derek finally reaches over and takes it from him. “So yeah, how about those wolves? Cool, huh? Apex predator comeback and all that.”

“What the hell are you doing?” Derek snaps.

“We’re just…out. Checking out the wildlife.” Scott slowly lowers his hands, then eases up next to Stiles. “We’re, um, we’re—”

“Into wolves,” Stiles says, and then flips his phone around to show that the back of its case has the three-wolf-moon design embossed on it in silver. “And coyotes, and basically canines in general. Canis genre-lovers, that’s us.”

That is such a load of bullshit, Derek thinks, staring at the other man’s straight-to-the-point-of-boredom face.

“Are you seriously asking us to believe that?” Allison says. She motions vaguely with her crossbow, then jumps a little and hastily lowers it. Then she starts breaking it down. “You’re out in the woods in the middle of the night, no flashlights—”

Stiles turns on the flashlight feature on his phone.

“Well, anyway, there aren’t any wolves in this area yet,” Derek says, irritated.

“Says the _government_ ,” Stiles retorts, using an exaggerated scoffing voice. “Whatever, okay, you don’t have to believe in my eco-warrior bonafides for me to justify my—”

“We’re from where there are wolves now, and we were part of a volunteer group to help educate people about wolf reintroductions. So there’s nothing like that here, but we’re still interested,” Scott jumps in. He’s keeping half an eye on Stiles, because apparently it’s more important to convince him than Derek or Allison. “I know there haven’t been officially-verified reports yet, but actually if you look at the citizen-reported ones, there are some credible sightings and—”

“Sure. Fine.” Derek stretches up a little as some lights come into view beyond Scott, then nudges Allison. “Go back to the wolf-counting, we were leaving anyway.”

“Oh, good,” Scott says, blowing out a breath.

Stiles snaps his head around and stares at him, and Derek—almost takes a step towards them, before Stiles pastes on a big fake grin on his face and lassos one arm around Scott’s shoulder, dragging the other man towards him. They go off a couple steps, Stiles talking loudly about their leafleting plans, as Cora drives up.

“Hey…what are they doing here?” Cora asks.

Derek goes around to the driver’s side and stares at her and she finally unclips her seatbelt and gets into the back. He hands her the machete and drops behind the wheel, and he’s reaching down to adjust the seat when Stiles suddenly shouts.

Jerking up, Derek bangs his elbow into the bottom of the wheel, and then he jerks back as something clatters onto the hood of his car. A crazy swirl swings in from the right, and then Allison pulls herself up. She looks rattled, and Derek has to grab her arm before she lifts that crossbow any more and jams it into the windshield.

There’s a thin black thing twisting up against the glass. At first, Derek thinks somebody’s fucked with his wipers, and then he looks closer and realizes what it really is: the bolt from Allison’s crossbow.

“Don’t mess with the wolves!” floats back Stiles’ voice. He and Scott are still visible at the far end of the firepit area, just barely—Scott’s leaning towards him, maybe yanking at one arm. Stiles is using his free one to wave at them. “They’re still an endangered species! I’m just saying, jail time is serious!”

“I told you—” Cora starts, but then she’s cut off when Allison slams the door shut on her side.

“Can we—” Allison starts, and then sags in relief when the car engine roars.

* * *

“I don’t know,” Cora’s saying as Derek pulls into their house’s street. “I just…think you both might be overreacting a little?”

She’s trying really hard not to be as offensively blunt as she usually is. Derek can tell because when Allison doesn’t immediately reply, Cora leans up between the two front seats and peeks at her before going on.

“Look, they’re psycho. I told you that,” she says, kicking only at Derek’s seat.

“Watch the leather,” Derek mutters.

“ _Look_. You weren’t there,” Allison says, voice tight, arms clamped around herself. 

“Well, I know, because we said we’d hide the car and Derek wouldn’t give me the machete, because I guess now we know what he cares about more than his car,” Cora says, annoyed, and then she grimaces and hikes back in her seat, rubbing one hand over her face. She takes a deep breath, then pushes the hair away. “Okay, so they showed up and were weird and they’re lying about wolf-watching—”

Derek starts to say something, but so does Allison. He looks over and she frowns back at him, a little curious, a little something else. Then she looks away through the windshield. “I…I think that actually might be it.”

“Wolf-watching?” Cora says, blinking. “Like…really? That’s what you think is going on?”

“Not—maybe not exactly that, but something like that. I don’t know, okay? It was weird, you’re right, I just…” Allison presses her lips together. “Scott’s the one who brought that up. And I know you think I’m just having an ovary moment—”

“Does she actually have you saying that,” Derek mutters.

Allison looks at him, and he’s not looking at her so he can’t see her expression but it feels sort of amused. Of course, then Cora kicks the back of his seat again. “Well, Ally, I’m sorry, but if those two sociopaths show up and freak you _and_ Derek out with just a custom iPhone case and some car vandalism, and all you’ve gotta say is you believe their weird little alibi—”

“No, I thought he was—” Derek pauses. He has to turn into their driveway just then, but that’s not the whole reason. “He wasn’t lying, okay? Scott, anyway. Maybe he wasn’t telling the whole truth either, but…”

“I think it’s just I thought he was way more worried that Stiles was going to make him shut up than anything about us,” Allison says.

She looks at Derek again, and he nods. That’s pretty much it, he thinks, watching the garage door rise; obviously, something else is going on, but the whole thing about the wolf-volunteer group, Stiles just seemed too annoyed about Scott blurting that out for it to not be real.

“Well, okay, so they’re crazy ecoterrorists, is that what we’re going with?” Cora says, and she’s not entirely sarcastic. “I guess that makes sense of the lab, and Stiles is obviously the evil mastermind while poor Scott’s in over his head and probably wishing he’d just stuck to the World Wildlife Federation or something…like…that…”

There are people standing in their garage. Mom, Peter, Allison’s parents…and some police officer. And _Scott_. Smiling a little nervously, and he only lifts his hand halfway to wave before Chris Argent swivels around and stares incredulously at him, and he seems to rethink it.

“What,” Cora says. “We took the _shortcut_.”

“Cora, just hide the machete, okay?” Allison hisses, twisting around. Her jacket’s bulging oddly, and then she twists back and leaves the jacket bunched up on the seat as she gets out of the car, and Derek realizes what she’s trying to cover up.

He strips out of his coat and tosses it onto her seat too, then trudges up to see what the hell is going on.

* * *

“Look, nobody got hurt, but there’s a reason why the preserve has a curfew, all right? We’ve been having a real problem with vagrants and the other night one of the deputies found a fire that’d spilled out towards the treeline. They put it out, but you could see how that could’ve gone south real fast,” says interim Sheriff Stilinski, like he’s just trying to do his job and doesn’t have a son running around the preserve talking about wolves and acting serial-killer shady. “So I’m just asking you to respect the rules.”

“Oh, we’re very respectful, Sheriff,” Victoria Argent says, her arms firmly clamped around an unhappy-looking Allison. “Believe me, you’re not going to find a family that has more interest in following the law than we do. I’m sure this wasn’t remotely Allison’s idea—”

Cora doesn’t exactly duck behind their mom’s shoulder before she rolls her eyes. Not that their mom is paying attention to her. “I’m sure I didn’t bring up my children to throw bystanders under the bus, just because that’s the only form of legal defense I can afford,” their mother says, smiling sweetly.

Sheriff Stilinski pauses and looks between the two women.

“Well, next time _Allison_ isn’t going to be the one the cops pick up,” Chris Argent says, glowering from beside his wife.

“Look, it actually was—” Allison starts to say, though she’s muttering. 

“Anyway, why the hell was _Scott_ here out late to see us and report it?” Cora says, abruptly shoving herself up. “Also, your kid?”

“Stiles?” the Sheriff says, frowning. He blinks a couple times, and then shakes his head. “He’s at home.”

“I wasn’t actually in the preserve, I was just jogging by the entrance and saw your car going on,” Scott chimes in. 

Derek, Allison, and Cora all stare at Scott. Who looks uncomfortable about it, but the way you’d look uncomfortable if you were a self-righteous little asshole who’d seen some rule-breakers and gone on down the road to the diner where night-shift cops got their coffee to report it, and then caught a ride with one to help ‘explain’ things to the rule-breakers’ parents. He meets their eyes, he just flushes and shrugs while he’s doing it.

“It really is dangerous out there,” he says.

“Are you fucking—” Cora hisses, and then shuts up.

Not coincidentally, that’s when Peter steps up between her and Derek. “Well, I’m sure we’ve all learned some valuable lessons tonight, Sheriff,” he says. Pauses, and then angles his body to point towards the road. “We’ll have a talk with the children about your concerns.”

“You do that,” the sheriff says, still looking done with this. He takes a step towards the garage door, then half-turns back. “Because if the patrols catch you actually in the preserve next time, we’ll be having this same talk down at the station. Both sets of you. DA can sort out whose idea it actually was.”

Derek’s mom sucks in air, about to challenge that, and then gets caught up by the fact that Chris Argent had done almost exactly the same thing at the same time. By the time she’s finished glaring at him and wiggled out front, Peter has her by the arm and the sheriff…is halfway down the driveway.

“What the fuck, McCall,” Cora says.

Scott’s still hanging around, although he’s moving towards the sheriff when Derek looks over. “I’m sorry, but I honestly just want to make sure nobody gets hurt,” he says. His eyes start on Cora, go to Allison—who just folds her arms over her chest—and then to Derek. “What he’s saying is right.”

“I’m sure your mother would agree,” Peter says casually. Then steps out to the side, waving Scott to come over with him. “Oh, no, it’s far too late now for you to just walk home. She’d never forgive us if something happened and she walked into the office to find you in a drawer tomorrow morning. I’ll give you a ride.”

“Thanks, but I’m fine. I’m not that far away,” Scott says. He glances over his shoulder at the sheriff and for a second, Derek thinks he’s going to call out for a ride, but then the sheriff disappears around a bush and Scott pulls back. “It’s a ten-minute walk, tops.”

“You live on the other side of town,” Allison says. She’s still not smiling. “One street down from me, actually.”

Scott twitches, but not like he’s just been caught in a lie. He looks more like he honestly just forgot. “Oh, no, I’m staying over with Stiles since his dad’s on the late shift tonight.”

“But you went jogging up by the preserve?” Chris says.

“I used to do track and field at my last school,” Scott says, and this time he _is_ lying. He’s just too smooth about it, and from what Derek’s seen, the man is anything but smooth. “Keeping up my stamina?”

“Well, look, _we’ll_ give you a ride,” Chris says after a moment. Still doesn’t look like he believes Scott, but when Scott shakes his head, Chris almost looks like he’s going to lunge and grab his arm. “Least we can do for helping our daughter.”

“Oh, stop trying to coerce the poor boy,” Derek’s mom suddenly says. When Chris slews around and looks at her, she gives him a showy little shrug. “We actually did have his mother over for dinner, and I can tell you she’s not the kind of person to appreciate this.”

“Okay, look, I’m just gonna…” Scott pauses halfway down the driveway, still facing them, up on his toes from jittering backwards “…I’m gonna go. I didn’t really want to cause trouble, honestly.”

Victoria catches Chris by the elbow, then leans over his shoulder. “We should just leave too,” she says quietly, but not without a baleful look at Derek’s mother. “We’ll deal with it later.”

“Fantastic. Can’t wait,” Peter says dryly, as Chris, lips thinned out, gives Allison’s arm a tug. “I’ll clear my calendar.”

“You do that,” Chris mutters. “You do that.”

* * *

So none of that night makes any sense to Derek, including the fact that somehow he is now _grounded_. “I can legally vote!”

“Well, then you have an outlet for your idiotic impulses that only puts the rest of the country in danger, as opposed to our family,” Peter mutters. He closes the folder in front of him and flicks it to the side, then picks up a fresh one. But it doesn’t seem to be any more helpful, so he tosses it and then yanks over his laptop, and irritably types on it for several seconds. And then he sighs and rolls his head to look up at Derek. “Yes?”

“You can’t actually—” Derek starts.

“I _can_ , in fact, because I’m the only reason you’re suspended instead of expelled.” Then Peter goes back to typing. “Besides, your mother’s the one who grounded you. I’m just the one who has your car keys and who you know will call the good sheriff on you if you try to take them.”

Derek hates his family sometimes. He stares at Peter, who at least doesn’t look like whatever he’s typing is something he enjoys either, and then flops himself down on the couch on the other side of Peter’s home office. “Shouldn’t we be fucking telling the sheriff about his son?”

“Why, because you think he isn’t actually in on it? I thought we sent you to college to finish your education, not to lose more brain cells,” Peter says.

“What?” Derek says. When Peter doesn’t answer him, Derek pulls himself up. “Peter.”

“I’m trying to work, Derek. You know, that thing I do where I both make money and maintain the connections I need to handle things whenever money and your mother aren’t going to do it,” Peter says. He stops flicking his fingers at the laptop and leans back in his chair, reading something. His mouth twitches like he’s going to snap, and then he just rubs at his face and pushes the laptop away. Breathes in, pulls it back, and types something. “Well, if my fellow partners could just _keep track of actual bodies_.”

“What?” Derek says.

“We have an HR department, do we not? And yet why I end up having to figure out if we have more contractors on payroll than we do billing IDs…I _should_ just make them sort it out. If that wouldn’t just mean I then have to deal with the IRS…” Peter sighs and closes his laptop. He looks over at the folders, keeping his hand where it is, and then abruptly turns to Derek. “Stilinski and McCall move into town the same week, and one takes up a job with the police while the other takes over the morgue. That doesn’t seem suspicious to you?”

Derek shrugs. “I was more paying attention to their kids. Who _blew something up_ at school and got something like three hours of detention, when I just make money, and I’m withholding taxes like I’m supposed to, but I still get nailed.”

“But I am talking to you and not your sister,” Peter says, with that slightly distant thoughtful look that means he’s not really concentrating on undermining Derek’s ego, and might actually want Derek’s help with something rather than just thinking it’d be funny.

“That’s because when Mom said she was grounded, she locked herself in her room and yelled that she can’t go out anyway because of her fucking English final,” Derek says.

Peter’s eyes focus. “Derek, do you want to talk me out of this or do you want to know?”

Derek bites back his first response. The other man waits for him, which means Peter really is taking this seriously. “Well, how bad is ‘this’?”

“I think you should be telling _me_ that, considering you and the Argent girl went out there armed to the teeth,” Peter says dryly. And then, before Derek could point out that that’d been because they’d tranquilized and relocated a bear out of the preserve earlier in the year, he picks up a folder and tosses it to Derek.

It doesn’t hold news clippings, but then, Derek wasn’t really expecting something that cliché. What it does have is an autopsy report of a woman whose body had been found cut in half several years ago. With photos.

“I remember this. They thought it might’ve been because that Black Dahlia movie had just come out,” Derek says, once he’s sure nothing but words will come out when he opens his mouth. He’s got a pretty strong stomach, but he’s not somebody processing murder victims all day long. “This is related?”

“This is one of the cases Melissa McCall has worked on. She’s had a very interesting career, that woman—we’re just the latest on her whistle-stop tour of all the morgues who’ve landed a bisection mutilation,” Peter says, leaning back in his seat and looking very Bond-villain. He’s even steepling his fingers as he stares at Derek. “Every single place she’s worked. Every one.”

Derek looks back at the folder. Then at Peter. Then he closes the folder, and stretches out an arm and carefully puts it back on the corner of Peter’s desk. “And you’ve been looking into her and you noticed what kind of _corpses_ she’s interested in?”

“You know, with that tone of yours, I have the strong impression that you think _I’m_ the sick mind here,” Peter says sharply. He snags the folder back and then starts to get up. “My point, Derek, is—”

“You think she’s looking for somebody specifically?” Derek asks. He watches the way Peter’s expression changes. “Or she’s just looking for…for, I don’t know…a specific job…”

Peter stops looking almost edgy and goes back to his normal contempt. “Derek, I really don’t know where you and your sisters got this idea that your mother and I work with contract killers, or honestly, criminals generally—”

“Unless they’re not charged yet—”

“Those are _business owners_. This is the United States, you are innocent until proven otherwise and I challenge you to name a top business school who hasn’t had buildings paid for by exploiting some loophole,” Peter says in a withering tone. He pushes in his chair, then pauses with one hand lifting his laptop. “If I thought it was nothing more than garden-variety organized crime, I would’ve just checked whether they and the Argents knew each other.”

Both Peter and Derek’s mother say a lot of that kind of thing about the Argents, but something about the way Peter does it this time gets Derek’s attention. Maybe the way he checks that Derek’s still listening when he says it. “You think that? That it’s to do with them?”

“Well, I don’t see why the sheriff’s keeping such a close eye on them if not. He’s got his son trying to infiltrate my firm as an intern, wanting to see about the land deal we closed for Gerard before those hypocrites tried to throw your mother off the bank’s board,” Peter snorts. 

He scoops up his files along with his laptop and heads for the door, clearly meaning to just leave Derek to stew on that. Because he does that, sits on critical information forever and then drops it and doesn’t tell Derek anything else till Allison’s parents are screaming at them in front of the high school again. And nothing Derek’s ever tried to do has ever stopped Peter from doing that, so Derek just doesn’t even bother.

So of course this is the time Peter stops midway out the door and looks back. “Look, whatever Cora’s gotten you roped into with Allison…”

“Cora’s not that dumb, and Allison does actually want to be friends with her, and shouldn’t you try yelling at her for once?” Derek says automatically.

Peter pauses and for a second, almost looks…hurt or something. Like he wishes that wasn’t Derek’s first reaction. “Just make sure what the Argents are up to _stays_ what they’re up to, and not you,” he says after a moment, expression neutral. “I may not think Chris is his father, on several levels, but that doesn’t mean he can’t drag you down too, and we’ve worked too hard, Derek. We’re sending you back to college and you need to _not_ get in the way of that.”

“Okay. Fine.” Derek puts his hands down on the couch. “Grounded, remember?”

Looking annoyed, Peter leaves the room. Derek waits a few minutes, till he’s sure the other man has really gone away and isn’t just getting water or something, and then he pulls his phone out.

* * *

_it’s in your car that’s why._

_Peter literally just threatened me with the cops if I leave the house. Your side of the house is easier to sneak out of and Allison’s your friend anyway._

_you’re an actual grown adult derek. they can’t really ground you._

_That isn’t even the point. Look, this was your fault for getting me into looking into these people when Peter and Mom were already on it and now we’re probably all going to get dragged into it._

_so go see if they’re murdering ally. since she’s down a crossbow and everything._

_Are you two actually friends?_

_fuck you you asshole you know she was the only one who ate lunch with me back before i won the school some trophies and they decided to shut up about mom and peter. you all just thought it was funny and didn’t give a shit._

_I didn’t think it was funny. You know that._

_you were still too much of a jock for them to mess with you and whatever. i don’t even give a shit about stilinski and mccall anymore them and peter and mom can have their psycho territorial cage match. i just want to know ally’s parents aren’t giving her shit. sometimes i think they’re gonna ship her off to some backwoods brainwashing camp the way they act. they get so fucking weird and that speech the sheriff gave is the kind of thing that’ll set them off._

_She’s eighteen, isn’t she?_

_so what they have a lot of guns at home._

_and also she had your back with those wolves or whatever. which is why we have her crossbow anyway._

_she was gonna stop her parents from throwing us under the bus with the cops._

_besides i can’t climb back in because you and laura broke the tree before you went off to college so what’s the point if i can sneak out but not back._

_Okay, fine, I’ll go get some goddamn milk and walk by her house. Which is going to take two hours. And Peter’s still going to know._

_so don’t buy milk buy drain cleaner._

_Why do we need drain cleaner._

_bathroom break, brb. also get more hair gel while you’re out._

* * *

Peter gives Derek his keys back, and makes Derek drop him off at his office because of the smell. Which is nonexistent, seeing as Cora flushed before she clogged up the pipes with a combination of hair and extra-hold pomade, but fine, it gets Derek out of the house.

“Just so you know, Laura’s already on her way over to take Cora to the hospital. I understand they always need more hands in the children’s ward,” Peter says, handing Derek a black leather shaving bag. “Also, _please_ try not to lose this.”

The bag is a lot heavier than it looks, and when Derek fumbles it in surprise, what’s inside shifts in a—Derek freezes. Then gets the bag down on his knee so its contents stop sliding around and then unzips it just enough to see the gun inside. “Are you—”

“It costs more than your tuition to get a gun that’s legal _and_ traceable in a way that’s reasonably defensible,” Peter says, getting out of the car.

Derek is still staring at the bag. “Which means what, you’re trying to frame someone?”

“Well, only if you end up using it _and_ getting caught,” Peter sighs, like they’re just talking about stiffing a parking meter. He ducks back in to grab his bag, then pauses. “I know exactly what you’re doing.”

“Then why are you letting me do it?” Derek snaps. The bag jiggles and he curses, then drags it back and zips it up. “Why don’t you just—”

“Because obviously, I have a plan. And you and your sister are going to make changes in it anyway, so I might as well not tell you how so you stick to your original plan and I don’t have to adjust any more things,” Peter mutters, pulling himself out of the car. “And also make sure you have effective tools. The Argent girl at least thought to bring something that she can shoot from a distance. A machete? Really?”

“You’re the one who bought it,” Derek says, even though Peter’s already stopped listening to him.

He thinks about not doing this, as the other man walks off down the sidewalk. And then he shoves the gun into the glovebox, cursing under his breath, and drives over to the street Allison Argent lives on.

If he doesn’t, Cora would be pissed off. And Derek isn’t afraid of that, but he is afraid of what his sister might get up to if she thinks nobody else is going to help. She only gives a shit about a couple people in the world, but when she gives a shit, she…basically acts like the rest of their family. And with the way that Peter is acting—well, if he thought he was going to scare Derek off, it’s pretty much having the opposite effect. Because if Peter is taking things this seriously, then that means whatever is going on, is going to be a problem for all of them. And Derek really does _not_ appreciate having his family be threatened.

He’s also not an idiot, so he stops the car two blocks short of Allison’s house and then walks around to the street that’s behind the house. That side is only half-built out—Allison lives on the edge of the neighborhood—and he can cut across a lot that’s still mostly scrub brush to stand catty-corner to her backyard. 

Derek doesn’t bring the gun with him, because again, not stupid, but he does have Allison’s crossbow in a tote bag he got from Laura’s room. He’s looking for a good spot to toss it when there’s a noise near him. He turns around and sees Allison and swings the bag up towards her head and then jerks it back down.

“Sorry,” she says, eyes wide. She’s not reaching towards him. She’s got one hand hidden behind a bush, but then steps out and she’s holding a bookbag. The way she’s twisted around, it looks like she’d been heading in the opposite direction and just now decided to come towards Derek. “I didn’t…Derek?”

“Yeah, you left this,” Derek says, jiggling the tote bag.

Allison stares at him for another second. Then, slowly, she reaches out and takes the bag. She looks happier when she sees what’s in it, but she’s still a little standoffish. “Oh, thanks.”

“Cora was worried about your parents,” Derek says after a moment, when Allison doesn’t say anything else. “She’s grounded, so…”

“So am I, technically,” Allison mutters. She unzips the bookbag and starts to put the other one in it, then glances up at Derek. He must have twitched because she cocks her head, then stuffs the bookbag under one arm and pulls the crossbow out of the tote, and then offers the tote back to him. “Except Dad just dropped us off and then took off somewhere, I have no idea where, and Mom’s spent the whole day calling the entire PTA trying to round up a posse against Scott’s mom and it’s like they totally forgot I could’ve gone pro as a gymnast.”

“I’ll tell Cora you’re not out in the hills getting brainwashed,” Derek says.

Allison’s trying to get her bookbag zipped up again one-handed, but she flashes a smile at him. Then looks all the way up, her smile fading as they stare at each other.

“So they’re not letting you out either?” she finally asks. “Because they’re busy planning how to screw over my parents?”

“No. Your parents obviously aren’t the only psycho people in town right now,” Derek says, annoyed. “They’re checking out the McCalls. And that Stilinski nutcase.”

For a second Allison looks surprised. And then she grimaces and looks guilty, and even though Derek thinks she _should_ , he still…doesn’t feel gratified by it. “Oh. So…I was thinking,” she says slowly. She keeps stopping and pressing her lips together, like she wants to see whether her words bite her back before she goes on. “About them. I was wondering whether this might be because of my grandfather. You know if he hadn’t died when he did, he was probably going to go to prison?”

“I’d heard that,” Derek says. From Peter, so he hadn’t really known whether to take it as ranting or planning, but either way, he hadn’t paid much attention at the time.

Allison takes an abrupt breath, then steps slightly sideways like she’d needed to get her balance back. “Yeah, so he and my aunt had some kind of gang or militia going, and the real story is they got killed off in some turf war. I don’t really know the details, Dad just wants us to stay far away from anything about it, but…you know, with Stiles’ dad taking over the sheriff job and Scott’s mom working in the morgue, maybe it’s…or do you think this is too crazy?”

“I think it’s not as crazy as being ecowarriors for wolves,” Derek says. He takes a step back, then motions down the street. “I parked over there.”

Allison comes with him, though she looks as if she doesn’t exactly know what they’re doing. “So maybe this is leftover stuff from whatever my grandfather was into,” she continues. “Because Scott’s been really trying to make friends with me, ever since he started here. And I know Cora thinks _I’ve_ been crushing on him, but—”

“It’s the other way around?” Derek says. He hears somebody coming down the street and steps back behind the tree he’d been about to pass.

They take the turn instead and go down a side-street, taking their dog with them. He peeks out, then eases onto the sidewalk as Allison follows behind. “Well, he’s cute, I’m not going to lie,” Allison says, still defensive. “And I think—I think he really does think he’s being nice. I mean, being nice about whatever it is he’s actually trying to do. But it’s just he kept trying to see if he could come over and meet my parents, and I don’t actually think he _wants_ to meet them, and—where are we going, by the way?”

“Wherever you were heading with that,” Derek says, with a chin-jerk at her bookbag. Then, when she just stares at him, he frowns. “You were going somewhere, weren’t you?”

“Well, I wasn’t going to figure things out from my bedroom,” Allison says sharply. Then she half-ducks her head, half-pretends she needed to tuck her hair behind her ear. “I—I had this idea—so you’re still going to do this? Doesn’t your family think I’m just going to sell you out?”

“Were you going to?” Derek snaps back. She’s annoyed so he’s annoyed, even though honestly, he knows this is all not what is really going on. Her eyes don’t match her tone. “Look, you’re friends with my little sister, have I ever messed with that?”

“No.” Suddenly Allison’s quiet and folded up, her elbows pulling up against her ribs. She’s not that much shorter than him, and the chunk heels on her boots nearly make up for the difference, but for a second Derek gets the impression he’s staring down at the top of her head. “No, you’ve actually always been…well, I could tell you didn’t like babysitting her but you pretty much left her and me alone. You don’t even make comments about me like Laura does.”

Derek grimaces without thinking. Laura just is trying to look out for Cora, but she’s always been a little too much like Peter with how she does that, no matter how often she insists she’s going to drop the family trauma and leave town. “You were kids, it’s not like you knew what your parents were doing.”

“Well, I grew up, you know,” Allison says, with an odd look at Derek. He’d call it flirty, except it’s too steady to just be about getting a rise out of him. “Hey, so…you know, trying to hit on you. I feel ba—I should probably say sorry about all of that, it probably didn’t help with my dad.”

“It’s not like I thought you were doing it for anything but to piss him off,” Derek shrugs. “I wasn’t really going to get mad about it.”

“Yeah, that’s why—I kind of knew that, and did it anyway, and I just—” Allison looks at Derek and tries to hide her face behind her hand at the same time, brushing back her hair, a little flushed “—I was really annoying. Sorry.”

A couple seconds pass, and then Derek finally nods. He’s not sure what to say, but it’s the kind of silence that isn’t going to close on its own, and they should probably stop this and actually do something. 

“Anyway, so Scott lives near me, right?” Allison says. “We don’t even need to drive, it’s a five-minute walk. And this whole thing about him jogging at night—he really does, I’ve seen him. Actually, he usually leaves around now, so I was thinking we’d go over there and see if he’s left yet.”

* * *

The McCalls are renting a small clapboard house that could use a paint job on the garage. Which has its door up and is empty, when Derek and Allison arrive. Beacon Hills is a reasonably safe town—if you don’t cross certain people—but that’s still a little strange.

“Then again, they don’t have _anything_ except trashcans,” Allison observes as they skirt around the sideyard. “They’ve been here a few months now. You’d think they would have unpacked something by now.”

“Maybe it’s all in the basement,” Derek says, and then frowns as Allison starts to take her crossbow back out. “What are you doing? It’s still light out.”

Allison shoves the crossbow back in, hunching her shoulders a little, but she doesn’t zip up the bag. She slows down as they approach the edge of the house’s yard. “I don’t see anyone else out, and we’re…we’re kind of trespassing. You don’t want to be prepared?”

Derek stops too, and gives the house another look. The yard’s not that big and from where they are, they can sort of see into the windows. Enough to tell that the lights are off, and unless people are lying down, there doesn’t seem to be anyone inside. Which, again, why the garage door is up and no car is there is…wanting to make him agree with Allison. 

“Do you want to go back?” Allison asks.

That hadn’t been why Derek had been looking—he gives himself a shake and faces the house again. The gun is still a stupid idea, especially if he’s supposed to go back to college. “No. Just…what are we looking for? Did you want to go inside?”

“I…honestly hadn’t really thought about it,” Allison admits, after a moment’s fiddling with her crossbow. She shifts her weight to her other foot. “I mean, what do you think they’re up to? Besides messing with our heads?”

“Scott’s mom—” Derek starts.

Allison watches him expectantly, and then twists sharply, like she’s going to leave. He lifts his head and she doesn’t, but she looks frustrated. “I guess there’s no point in me telling you I’m not my parents?”

“That’s not…” Derek hesitates and he can see the way she settles back into resignation “…most of it. Really, it’s just—this is my uncle’s theory, and Peter’s kind of a conspiracy theorist sometimes.”

“Well, he can’t be imagining all of it, if my dad takes his threats seriously,” Allison says after a moment. Her expression’s a little less stiff. “Anyway, it’s got to be better than trying to protect the wolves.”

“He thinks they’re serial killers. Or trying to track a serial killer. I don’t know, it mostly seems to be because of Scott’s mom’s job, and nobody’s died here lately that I’ve heard of,” Derek mutters. He rubs at the side of his head, staring at the house. “Unless what, we haven’t heard about it because the bodies are all stuffed in the basement there?”

Allison blinks at him, then laughs. It’s nervous and low, but it doesn’t seem to be making fun of him. “That’d be really silly, if they took the trouble to get jobs with the police and the morgue and they end up, I don’t know, chopping up the bodies here and then going into the woods to drop them off?”

“Well, if the bodies are really mangled,” Derek says. “It’s not like we have a lot of major accidents in town. Or maybe—maybe they don’t want anyone to even realize the dead people were here?”

“Oh. Good point,” Allison says. She absently shifts her bag. “So maybe the garage is open like that because they just had to scrub it down? It’d probably be easier to do it there than in the basement, you have to carry everything back up again.”

“Like they’re airing it out?” Derek says.

It does kind of make sense. And since the garage is wide-open, they could get a better look inside it without having to go that much further onto the property.

Derek takes a couple steps without thinking, then pauses, only to find that Allison’s right alongside him, peering into the garage. Since he doesn’t have to bring her up to speed, he heads over to the end of the driveway and then up a couple feet, just to the top of where it intersects with the sidewalk.

There _has_ been a car in it recently, he can see the oily patches on the concrete, and on the other side is a short tire-track that looks odd until he remembers Scott has a motorcycle. Both of them look fresh, so the garage couldn’t have been cleaned that recently.

“What’s that?” Allison says. When Derek looks over, she points at the far left corner of the garage interior, right by the door to the house. “Does that…does that look like a…a machete to you?”

There is something long and thin lying against the wall. He’d missed it at first because it’s the same color as the concrete, and shoved right up against part of the wall that has some cracks running through it so it’s not immediately obvious the bend is really something sticking out and not just an optical illusion. And it does look like a machete.

Derek turns around, seeing nobody, and then lets the turn’s momentum swing him about a yard further up the driveway. This still isn’t really going to help his case with the university’s board of regents, but…it’s a pretty short driveway, the garage is open so they can run right back out, and it’s just one thing to look at. So he goes and looks at it.

It’s not a machete. “It’s an actual _sword_ ,” Allison whispers, standing next to Derek. “And it’s—it’s been used. You see where those nicks are sort of smoothed over—”

There’s a clink overhead. Derek had gone down on one knee for a closer look at the sword, and he jumps back up, only to jerk backwards when his arm hits Allison. She swivels out of the way, then grabs his arm as they both turn towards the garage door. Which is going down.

“No, wait, there’s a car—” Allison hisses, pulling Derek back as he goes forward.

Somebody’s trying to turn into the drive. They must have hit the remote and then seen that the garage was open, because as Allison’s speaking, the door suddenly reverses direction and starts to roll up. Derek bites down on a curse and goes for the sword instead (and yeah, wishes he’d fucking listened to Peter for once and grabbed the gun), only for Allison to pull him away.

“Wait, the angle, maybe they didn’t see us yet—” And she drags him up the one step and then through the door, which somehow isn’t _locked_ , into the house.

She shuts the door behind them, quick but soft, and then stares at him, wide-eyed, her breathing starting to speed up. The car’s parking in the garage and Allison hiccups as the engine turns off, then reaches for the lock.

Derek intercepts her hand and hauls her further into the house. It’s still light enough outside that they can see around the rooms and they manage to not knock into any furniture, at least not so loudly that whoever’s coming into the place would realize that there are intruders. But not enough that they go the right way and find the back door Derek remembers seeing, instead of ending up in a dead-end office with the windows half-blocked by tons of cardboard boxes.

Before they can back out, a male voice booms through the house: “Let me spare you some of anticipation, my friends. I know you’re there.”

Well, then Derek’s going to kick the door shut and shoot the deadbolt. Then he grabs the three nearest boxes and heaves them in front of the door too, and then he goes to join Allison at the window, where she’s trying to get enough boxes out of the way so that they can go out of it.

“I know some people think the anticipation is really everything. Thrill of the chase, I’m sure you’ve heard,” the man continues. “But that’s really quite sadistic, and I’m not inclined to cruelty myself. There’s no need for that, not in this world.”

“Who the hell is that?” Derek mutters, jerking aside a box. They’re heavy and if he stopped to think, he’d wonder about it because paper can’t do that, but he’s busy. “That’s not—”

“I have no idea, I’ve never heard this guy in my life,” Allison hisses. She helps Derek get the last box out of the way and then grabs the latch at the top of the window, then freezes.

Scott slaps his palms against the glass. He looks like he just got out of a wind tunnel, hair blown back—a twig drops out of it as he presses his face up to the window—and his eyes are all whites. “Open it!” he says urgently. “Open it!”

Allison doesn’t scream. This little sharp burst-bubble noise comes out of her, as she stumbles back into Derek, and then she makes it again as something crashes into the door. Not against, _into_ , splintering out a panel. Something dark bulges into the spaces between the breaks, then withdraws.

“Open it and let me in! You need to—” Scott shouts.

Derek’s grabbing for the nearest thing on the desk, which turns out to be a—a taser? Then his gaze is jerked up from that to where Allison’s trying to rack something in her crossbow. A metal letter-opener that doesn’t look like it fits—because she wasn’t expecting him to bring the crossbow back—and she looks up from jamming it at him and then the door breaks completely apart and at the same time there’s flying glass and something huge and black rams between them.

It keeps going, even as Derek ducks. He throws his arm up because of the glass scattering over his head, but beyond it he sees a mass of roiling muscle. It starts to split on one side, and then abruptly lumps out of view into the hall. 

The whole time it’s noisy, but it’s—it’s hard to pick out what kind of noise. Wood smashing and glass tinkling and this kind of chainsaw rumble and grunts and bangs and then this wet muffled crack that makes Derek’s stomach twist. And then it’s quiet.

“Derek,” says Allison’s shaky voice. She reaches over from where she’s squeezed up against the wall and pushes something at his hand. “Here, just—I can just have the crossbow, it’s my spare—”

It’s that letter-opener she’d been trying to load. He takes it, his fingers so numb that he wouldn’t be surprised if some other mind was controlling them, and then nearly tosses it at Scott’s face when the other man suddenly appears in the doorway.

“Hey,” Scott says, apparently completely missing the letter-opener clattering against the wall by him. He’s a mess, his shirt half-ripped off, bits of carpet floating off his arm. “Hey, so, I think I chased them off. Are you two okay?”

“Chased…off?” Allison says. Even with her voice that wobbly, her disbelief comes through loud and clear. 

Scott’s face—it’s almost a wince, the way it goes from genuinely worried to—to worried. Not fake, it’s not that simple. It’s just whether they’re fine is clearly not the only thing in his head now. “Yeah, the burglar?” he says. He brushes at his arm, then huffs and flops against the jamb. “Wow, that was insane. I don’t even know what—oh, you’re _bleeding_! We have to call 911!”

“What, listen, that can’t possibly be—you can’t honestly think we—” Allison starts to say, getting up, and as she raises her arm to get the desk for a handhold, she and Derek both see what’s slicking down over her hand. 

She stops and then sways sharply, and Derek lunges over and grabs her under the arms, helping her up onto her feet. By then, Scott’s already got his phone out and is speaking urgently into it.

“He’s so lying,” Allison mutters as Derek pulls her out of the room, away from all the glass. “He’s so—my arm isn’t that bad, there’s no way…”

There’s no body. Derek stops for a second and Allison keeps on going, so that she ends up pushed into his shoulder, and then she twists and sees the empty hallway, just like he does. It’s ripped up and there are holes in the walls and blood everywhere, but there’s no body. And Scott wasn’t out in the hall for that long.

“Okay, they’ll be here in a couple minutes,” Scott says, coming back. He holds out something—a towel—and when they don’t do anything with it, he reaches out and takes Allison’s arm by the wrist.

Allison sucks in her breath and Scott goes very still. It’s a dark hallway but Derek still can see his eyes very clearly, can see how focused they are on both of them. And then, moving more slowly, Scott pushes up Allison’s sleeve and then wraps the towel around it. He reaches out again, hooking her other wrist and then positioning her hand over the towel. He doesn’t really look much at her arm, Derek notices, but he has the right spot from the way Allison suddenly winces.

“You can sit down here, just keep that elevated. Try not to move so it doesn’t bleed as much,” Scott says.

“We should go outside,” Derek says.

Scott blinks hard. Then shakes his head and he has this look on his face, like every math teacher Derek’s ever had, and somehow Derek knows he’s just going to repeat that part about not moving to keep the bleeding down.

“You just killed somebody in here!” Derek snaps. “And then you called the—there is _no_ way they’re going to look at this and not call the—”

 _Call the cops_ , Derek suddenly realizes, and at the same time, Scott lets out a long, tired sigh. He starts to say something, something that’s going to be a lie with more bad acting, and then he suddenly lifts his head and looks at them.

“Look,” Allison says after a moment of that. She’s angling her body to step straight back into Derek if something happens. “They sounded pretty crazed before you came in, I think it’s not going to be hard to argue self-defense. We’ll tell people they were threatening us.”

“That’s not—he’s not dead,” Scott says. At first he’s surprised at her suggestion, but he shakes it off fast. “Thanks, that’s…that’s really nice of you, but you don’t need to worry about me. Nobody got murdered.”

Derek stares at him. Sure, there’s no body, and the house isn’t that big and Scott wasn’t out of sight for that long, but—

“There’s way too much blood around for them to have just run off,” Allison says. “And—and I can’t believe you didn’t get a scratch on you.”

Scott’s eyes go so wide that Derek can see the _oh shit_ go through them. His hand comes up and almost goes to his chest, where his shirt’s ripped the worst, and then he jerks it down. He gives them both a long look, equal parts worried for them and about them, and why he’s still worried about them when he can take out another guy so hard the body’s just—disintegrated, something like that, Derek has no idea.

Well, except to think he’s standing in the hall with someone who can do that, without even that fucking letter-opener of Allison’s because that’s in the room behind him. And right, cops, Scott’s buddy’s friend runs them so it’s not like Scott even needs to hide a body.

“You have no idea what’s going on,” Scott says suddenly.

“No kidding,” Derek says.

“No, look, you have to—” Scott seems to come to a decision, his expression firming up as he crosses the hall. He notices that both Derek and Allison back up, and looks sad about it for a second, but he still keeps coming until he can take them by the shoulders. “You have to listen to me. You have no idea, and unless you want to deal with a lot of trouble, it’s better that way. So you need to just go—go sit in the living room, that’s probably better. Let them take you to the hospital and take care of you, and just don’t try to find out what’s going on.”

His grip’s hard to break out of, Derek thinks, and then his shoulder suddenly comes out of Scott’s fingers and he thinks maybe it’s just the shock and he wasn’t trying as hard as he’d thought. Anyway, they’re already in the other room at that point, which…looks pretty much like it had. Not that Derek had been paying much attention the first time he and Allison had run through it, but the furniture is all upright and free of tears.

“Because that guy who was trying to get us to open the door is going to forget about us,” Allison says. She does let Scott push her down onto the couch, though she doesn’t look that thrilled about it. “You know, since he’s not dead.”

Scott hesitates like he’s going to respond to that, then changes his mind and goes back for Derek instead. This time, Derek shakes him off right away, but Scott keeps walking up on him so Derek has no choice but to back up against the couch. “It doesn’t really matter whether he’s dead or not, he’s not going to bother you again,” Scott says. “Not as long as you just don’t go digging.”

“Sounds like a threat,” Derek says.

He doesn’t really mean that, he’s just—he doesn’t know where his goddamned head is at, honestly. He doesn’t even know what he just saw, or whether it’s safe to stay here, or why he’s even listening—he doesn’t know so that’s why he doesn’t do anything. And he _knows_ how fucking useless that is.

“It’s not a—” Scott starts, wide-eyed with surprise, voice rising a little with urgency, his eyes flicking off to the side. And then, just as Derek turns to look that way, Scott abruptly steps forward. All the nerves are gone and something about how focused he is makes Derek go still. “You broke into my house. We can’t tell your families that, right?”

“Is—is _that_ a threat?” Allison says after a second. She’s just as stiff as Derek, and just as taken off-guard by it, says her stuttering.

“No, I’m just telling you what we’re dealing with,” Scott says. He runs a little short of breath and has to gasp, temporarily ruining the weird spell he’s cast over them. But then his eyes snap back up as Derek shifts against the couch, and Derek actually does listen. “You’re not supposed to be here, and I have—I have things I need to deal with, and I don’t want to put those off any more than you want to stick around here, I’m guessing. So if you go with my plan, that’ll let you go home.”

“If we go with your plan, we’re basically letting you take care of some psycho who’s wandering around town and who already tried to get at us,” Derek points out. “Which, thanks, but I like to deal with my problems myself.”

Scott starts to smile, not like he doesn’t believe Derek, but like he does and he wishes he didn’t. “It’s not really your problem, okay?” he says. His tone drags a little. “It’s mine. I’ll deal with it.”

“So this guy, he’s not dead now, but he’s going to be dead? Is that what you mean?” Allison asks.

First his eyes flick over, and then Scott remembers to not look so _caught_. He draws a breath.

“You’re really bad at this,” Derek says. “Making stuff up.”

“I…” Scott ducks his head, swipes one hand through his hair, then abruptly straightens his shoulder “…yeah, fine, I am. But you…I mean, what are you two thinking is going to happen? You’re going to stay and hunt down this guy with me? Are _you_ okay with murder?”

The thing is, when he says that, he sounds like he’s really concerned. Not like he’s accusing, or issuing a dare, just like the one teacher who ‘gets’ the kids who sits you down before you make the wrong choice and asks what you’re doing.

“I mean,” he goes on, and his voice gets a little edge. Not much, but enough so that he stops coming off like he’s on TV. “Was that the idea with coming over to my place and bringing a crossbow?”

Allison flinches, then yanks her chin up and stares at Scott through narrowed eyes. “My family brought me up to protect myself, that’s all.”

“And you think you need to protect yourself against me,” Scott says after a second. His body sags, but he doesn’t really look surprised. He looks like this is exactly how he thought it was going to go, and he’s just sad because for a second it wasn’t headed that way. “Right. Well…we’re—I don’t actually want anyone to get hurt. Not if I can help it. And if you just…leave this, you don’t have to be involved at all. You really don’t.”

“We weren’t going to kill you,” Derek feels he has to say. And then pushes himself up when Scott actually blinks at him, like that’s the wrong answer. “We _weren’t_. It’s just—like she said, we wanted to be prepared.”

“So you thought I was going to kill you,” Scott sighs.

“Well, no, but—you did pull that stunt with the sheriff. And we were just in the _woods_ ,” Allison says, starting off defensive and then getting more pointed. “We weren’t even hunting—and by the way, if we had been, it is deer season and my whole family has current permits—and you just—because what, you and Stiles think the whole preserve belongs to you now—”

“ _We’re_ not the ones who think that,” Scott says, and then his whole body hitches. He’s so terrible at hiding anything. “I—”

Derek has seen this one before. “Can’t tell us? Because then you’d have to kill us?”

“No, because I don’t _want_ to kill you, but I can’t—and even if you believed me, you wouldn’t want to know. Trust me,” Scott says. He rakes his hand through his hair again, frustrated, and finishes up with a pleading look. “Or don’t. But…look, if you don’t want me to get in trouble for murder, can you at least do this for me? Just go with this, and go to the hospital. If you stay, it’s going to make things that much more complicated.”

Allison sucks in her breath, but instead of saying anything, she twists around and looks at Derek. She does it too fast and winces, pulling her arm in against her chest; blood’s soaked through, making a spot under her fingers that’s about two inches long. It doesn’t seem to be getting bigger, but that’s still…not good. And why she’s even looking at Derek, with her family who’s got enough hunting gear to raze the preserve and who taught her how to use it and—Derek bites down on the inside of his mouth. Fuck, he might be panicking.

Somebody maybe died and the reality of that suddenly is all he can think about. And it is selfish as hell, but the only way he can think to look at it right then is: _Even Peter can’t cover up another one and I’m never getting out of this town._

“Okay. Fine,” Derek says. “We’ll go to the hospital. But this—what happened here—”

“I’ll take care of it,” Scott tells him solemnly, as if one, Derek is someone he actually needs to make promises to, and two, that’s all Derek should need. “You don’t have to worry. He won’t go after either of you. It’s not really you two he wanted anyway, he just—he must have thought we were friends. I’m sorry about that, I’ll…I didn’t mean it to look that way.”

“You…didn’t want people to think we were friendly?” Allison says sharply. “Then what was all that about, trying to get an invite to my place and—”

Scott winces again. “No, sorry, I—look, I’d really love to be friends, but I just—that’s not—”

The paramedics save him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are, in fact, wolves in California now. 
> 
> Danny Trejo from _Machete_ is what Stiles means. Although I'm sure Trejo's picked up a machete in other movies too.
> 
> The Black Dahlia's a famous murder mystery in part because her body was also found cut in half, although nobody thinks it was werewolves vs. hunters. 
> 
> Allison knows about nicks in knives because of hunting, since if she's cutting up animals, she would need to regularly sharpen blades. Although really, any semi-serious cook would know about that sort of thing.
> 
> If everybody seems just a little bit off with non-normal-person reactions, this is intentional.


	4. Chapter 4

The cuts on Allison’s arm turn out to be not too deep, but a couple cross each other so sealing them up is complicated, so they do take her to the ER. They make Derek go too, even though as far as anyone can tell, he got out of it with just some bruises and scrapes.

Though he did get dinged up, he thinks, checking out his side in the mirror. He keeps going through his memories and he doesn’t think Scott had a single scratch under all of the rags and debris.

“What the hell did you let Ally get into!” Cora snarls, storming in.

Derek spins around and they stare at each other. Cora’s eyes slide down—his shirt’s flapped down but not all the way—and widen a little. She rocks on her feet, then decides not to rush him, and instead flops down on the empty cot across the room.

“I thought Laura was watching you,” Derek says.

“Yeah, _was_. She heard who was coming in and told me to find your ass and glue it in place while she went off to get Mom and Peter,” Cora says. She still sounds like she wants to take a swing at him. “I’m not sure whether it’s to keep them from just straight-up murdering Allison’s parents or to help them with that.”

The door’s still a little open from when Cora came in, and Derek can hear a gurney wheeling by. He goes over and shuts it all the way; the nurse pushing the gurney sees him and makes an annoyed face. This is the breakroom with the newest beds, but it’s not the only one and Derek knows this isn’t shift-change time for the hospital, so he doesn’t bother making a face back.

“She got more cut-up than I did,” Derek says.

“Yeah, like that’s going to matter, except Ally’s dad is going to murder you,” Cora says.

“I wasn’t—it was her idea to go over to Scott’s place,” Derek snaps. “And he was the one who—”

When he doesn’t go on, Cora’s brows rise. She plants her hands on either side of her and squishes down the cushions. “So Scott murdered somebody in front of you two?”

“What? No,” Derek says without thinking about it. And then he does, and presses his hand against his face. He doesn’t even know why he’d…he still thinks Scott was lying, and that guy died and Scott just managed to hide the body really fast. He can’t think of any other explanation. “Why are you so obsessed with murder?”

“Seriously?” Cora says.

Derek jerks around and stares at the door, even though he knows it’s shut. Then he turns back, hissing under his breath, and glares at her. “Do you seriously have no idea how to—”

“I’m not going to go blab it around town, but I’m also not going to do this—this thing like the rest of you, where Peter and Mom just signal with their eyebrows to each other and then act like it’s the crazy madwoman in the attic,” Cora snaps, so forcefully that she has to regrab at the couch to keep from coming off it. She glares back at Derek, breathing hard, and then inhales deep and sits back. “Look. It happened. We’re okay. I happen to think we should be _okay_ with that, and not letting it fuck up the rest of our lives.”

“Well, you weren’t old enough to really remember,” Derek mutters. He pushes himself up against the door, then decides he’d rather sit down. His elbow and then his hip twinge as he takes a seat on the tiny minifridge by the door, muscles stiffening up now. 

Cora inhales again, then shakes her head. “Not doing this now. We need to talk about—”

“Peter thinks it’s some serial-killer thing,” Derek tells her. “Allison said Scott was going out to jog every evening, and they have fucking nothing in their garage and just leave the door open when nobody’s open so psycho strangers can drive in.”

His sister being how she is, that just gives her pause for a flat second. “So Scott’s mom won Laura over by talking about living in L.A. and people she knows in the healthcare system because she started out as a nurse, and Laura’s been telling her—”

“About us?” Derek says.

“No, give Laura some credit,” Cora says, annoyed. “About the shit we put up with, because of the rumors. And Scott’s mom is all about true-crime stuff, because she doesn’t get enough of that at her job, and she’s been going on about that guy who disappeared from the preserve a few years ago.”

“How is that not talking about us?” Derek snaps. “That guy worked for Peter’s firm, and everybody thinks we did something.”

Cora catches herself mid-eyeroll. “Because Scott’s mom doesn’t think _we_ did it, moron. So Laura was interested, because Laura still thinks everybody’s gonna change their minds if we just prove it, and now Scott’s mom is researching it with her.”

Derek starts to snap again, and then stops himself. He makes himself try to think about it, about all of the pieces so far. He’s too far into this to not try and figure it out, and he knows by now that being pissed at himself for letting that happen isn’t going to save anyone.

“You think Mom and Peter already know?” Cora eventually says, and under her brash tone is a hesitant note. “Laura…she gets there’s something off about them. But I think she just thinks she’s good enough to play along.”

Stiles trying to get a job at Peter’s firm. “Yeah, I think they know,” Derek mutters.

* * *

“No, you don’t get to talk to him,” Derek’s mother says, firmly seeing Peter off from Derek’s bedroom door. “You’re too frustrated and twisting up Derek’s head isn’t going to make you feel better about that Stilinski boy outthinking you again.”

“He did _not_ outthink me!” Peter snaps from the hall. “It was sheer incompetence on the part of others. If we had paralegals who didn’t just assume anybody with a bike was a messenger boy and let them into the building—” 

“Well, and who decided it was better to keep things quiet after the intern fiasco and not pass around headshots?” Derek’s mother says, leaning against the jamb with her arms crossed over her chest. She arches her brow over one shoulder as Peter’s quiet, and then pushes off the wood just as Peter starts to speak again. “Because they decided that would be the obvious thing to do, and Stiles would just fake a fight and get his father to send some cops down and get people arrested? So instead you’d just bet on him trying again and let him get in so you could catch him at it, only you guessed the wrong alibi—”

“He failed all of his gym classes and volunteered to tutor the Comp Sci students instead of detention!” Peter calls back. His voice is receding, but he keeps raising it to make up for that. “Expecting him to come in through IT was completely reasonable!”

Derek’s mother sighs. She looks down the hall for another minute, then comes into Derek’s room, still shaking her head.

“Sorry,” Derek says.

She stops and regards him. Then sighs again, longer, unfolding her arms as she comes and sits on the edge of his bed and looks down at him. “About the Argents?”

He almost says yes, and then just shrugs. Whatever they’re about to talk about, he’s pretty sure he can’t avoid it.

“I’m not worried, you know,” his mom says. She folds her hands casually in her lap. “Yes, they’re going to scream and shout and—”

“—try and get me jailed again—” slips out of Derek’s mouth.

“Well, if they want to repeat _that_ mistake, you know you’re not going to jail,” his mother says. Her fingers twitch like she wants to reach out, and then she leans back instead, looking Derek over. “I know you, and I know whatever happened in that house, you didn’t force Allison to go there. I…can’t say that I understand what either of you were thinking, but I _can_ say that.”

Well, she’s his mother, he wouldn’t really expect her to say anything else. Her blaming him for it wasn’t ever on the table. And yet Derek does feel like he can let some of the muscles in his back and shoulders unwind, hearing that.

Which is usually the mistake he repeats around his family. “Derek, you’re going back to college,” his mom says firmly. “Peter is going to clear things up with the dean, and the board of regents if we have to go that high. You don’t worry about that—just worry about not getting dragged into anyone else’s nonsense. This family gets blamed for enough and I don’t want you taking on someone else’s troubles just beca—”

“I wasn’t there because I felt sorry for Allison,” Derek has to say. His mother raises her brows and that should make him stop, but it doesn’t. “I was there because those two kids are fu—they are beyond bizarre, and I’m just—Cora’s almost graduating and they could—”

“Derek,” his mother says, her voice lilting at the end. Not in a question; she does that when she’s about to lay down some reality with a trowel and a triple-layer of sealant on top. “Derek. Your uncle and I know there’s something strange going on, and we’re looking into it. So it’s fine.”

It is not even remotely close to fine, but Derek manages to keep that from coming out of his mouth.

His mom probably knows what he’s thinking anyway, because her eyes soften and then she reaches over and brushes his hair right above the left side of his forehead. “Honey, I know you and your sister worry—and people say the stupidest things in this town. But it’s all right. You’re going to be fine. You just think about getting back to college, all right?”

She looks into Derek’s eyes for nearly a minute, leaning across the bed, and then she smiles. Her fingers touch his hair again and she gets up and Derek sucks in his breath. Frowning, his mother turns back.

“You can’t just—you and Peter can’t just—we’re not actually kids anymore, Mom,” Derek finally manages. “Cora’s old enough to vote, even if she’s not old enough to remember enough words to get a decent SAT score.”

“She did just fine, she’s always been more of a conceptual learner than you or Laura,” his mother says, scolding a little. She’s using that to cover, he can tell because she blinks twice in quick succession before her gaze goes back to steady and level and not showing any almost-guilt at all. “And yes, you both are almost grown up, and ready to make your own choices in the world. It’s hard—I can’t even believe it, you know. That it’s already that time, and I just have to hope I showed you how to be smart about your lives and let you…go.”

So Derek can tell when his mother’s selling a line—she also means it on some level, but she multitasks to a degree even Peter’s jealous of—but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. He drops his gaze and feels her smiling at the top of his head, and then listens to her walk out of his bedroom door. And then, as her footsteps disappear down the hall, he grimaces and flops back and stares at the ceiling.

A couple minutes later, somebody else walks into the room and shuts the door. “Guilt trip?” Cora asks morosely.

“We are fucked,” Derek mutters. He rubs his hand over his face. “The only people who are more fucked are the Argents, and—look, does Allison have relatives she likes? Ones who don’t live in this state?”

“Peter fucking road-trips when he feels like it, you know that,” Cora says. She comes over, stops by the side of the bed, and then plops down on the floor beside it. A second later, the mattress rocks as she leans into it. “I texted her, and then her _mom_ texted back saying thank you so much for your concern and Allison will not be speaking to anyone right now. So I was gonna text Laura and ask her to put the ER on alert for bodies, but then Peter took my phone.”

Derek pinches the bridge of his nose. “I don’t think anybody’s actually going to die. Allison’s parents aren’t that crazy, and Mom and Peter are always going on about how we need to hold onto what reputation we’ve got.”

“Okay, we know the world’s going to end when you’re being optimistic,” Cora says.

“Shut up,” Derek says, with absolutely no feeling in it.

Cora doesn’t bother responding to that. They’re silent for a few minutes and Derek can hear Peter coming out of his room down the hall, calling downstairs to their mother about extra bleach. Then the voices drift away and he figures they’re both on the ground floor. 

“So technically, we can still sneak out,” Cora starts. “It sounds like they might both be leaving.”

Technically, they don’t have their phones or Derek’s car and the entire hospital, if not town, knows Derek was just in some kind of attempted break-in. Also, Derek’s mother guilt-trips him instead of actually locking him in because they both know that if it came down to a real fight, she’d win hands-down. The guilt trip’s mostly just to make Derek feel better about having no actual goddamn options.

“Where would we even be going?” Derek finally says. “Scott’s house is a crime scene and the preserve’s _maybe_ got wolves in it and Stiles—his dad’s the sheriff, you can’t actually be thinking about breaking into his place.”

“I hope not, because I didn’t set our boobytraps for your level of stup—oh, hi! Yeah, so. In your bedroom,” says Stiles. From the windowsill. Which is open and which he’s sitting on with his legs dangling inside. “So, listen, how about you two _not_ scream and I explain how we’re going to unfuck the way you morons fucked over Scott.”

Derek doesn’t scream. He also doesn’t just sit there on his bed and instead dives down on the side where Cora is. She doesn’t scream either and gets out of his way so that when he reaches under the bed and yanks out the machete, he doesn’t have to worry about where her legs are.

“Okay,” Stiles says after a moment. “This is…actually more impressive than I was expecting, but still. Not helpful.”

“Well, we weren’t trying to be,” Cora snaps from where she’s twisting a chair sideways in her hands, like it really matters which of its legs she has aimed at Stiles’ torso. “You’re a psycho.”

Stiles draws himself up, as if he’s going to get offended, and then nods thoughtfully. “Yes, this is true. But, and this is a _critical_ conjunction, people—I am not a psycho about you. At least, not yet. Not if I don’t have to be.”

“I don’t know what that means, and I don’t want you to explain it to me,” Derek says. “I just want you to get out of my house. And I don’t give a shit if your dad’s the sheriff—”

“It’s not like that hasn’t come up before,” Cora tags on.

“No, it wouldn’t, because we’ve never lived here before,” Stiles says slowly, as if they’re just confusing and he is not remotely threatened by them. One of his heels starts tapping against the wall. “Although this is telling me a hell of a lot more about you than the old police records did.”

“And what, this doesn’t?” Derek says, jerking up the machete.

Stiles gives Derek the same kind of look that Peter does whenever Derek’s suggested the legal equivalent of using water on a grease fire (which is why _Peter_ is the lawyer, not Derek). And then—

“Hey!” Cora calls in the background, and then she shuts up too.

“Look,” Stiles says, dragging out the word. He pauses and looks at each of them in turn, and then heaves a sigh as he flips the chair with one hand, sits in it, and then plants the machete between his spread knees, folding his hands over the top and leaning on it. In the middle of the room. Where he now is. “I don’t have time for this. You don’t have time for this.”

Derek didn’t even—feel it. Never mind see it, because there hadn’t been anything, not even blurs. Just one second Stiles was sitting in the window, and then next—Derek’s fingers are still curled like he’s holding the machete. He felt maybe a shift in the weight but that was it, no pull, no—he didn’t even get a chance to resist.

“The thing is, guys, Scott and I were perfectly happy to mostly ignore you people except for some nonconfrontational B&E, and honestly, we weren’t even taking anything but photos, but then you had to start getting curious,” Stiles goes on. His leg starts jiggling again. He doesn’t sound or look nervous at all; if anything, he’s just annoyed. “But then you _had_ to get all stalker-y about Scott and now we have to cover all of _your_ asses as well as our own, and tonight is not the night for playing _Veronica Mars_ , okay? ”

“You weren’t ignoring us. You’ve been trying to go after Peter,” Derek points out.

That gets a slight twitch out of the guy. “And what about Ally?” Cora demands, picking up on it too. “C’mon, Scott’s been all up in her business and—”

“Okay, listen, just because Scott can’t help wanting to make sure you people actually _are_ as driven-snow-innocent as you seem, and then he’s got this whole savior complex about innocent people—” Stiles starts, pushing up in his seat, and Derek and Cora both freeze. He still doesn’t look that intimidating, but something about the way he obviously thinks he is—it doesn’t seem delusional. It seems _real_. And then he catches himself, obviously reluctant, and Derek is halfway through a sigh of relief before he realizes. “Never mind. What you need to know is because you and Argent were at Scott’s house, we had to let Deucalion Blackwood go, and you have no idea who that is but if you think _I’m_ a psycho…anyway. So he’s running around town and he thinks your uncle’s firm helped hide the guy who got him blinded by some other people. This is kind of a problem.”

Cora starts to say something, then sucks her breath instead and looks over at Derek. He wishes she’d stop doing that—she only ever wants to know what he thinks they should do when they’re really going to fuck up something—but if Stiles is right about one thing, it’s that this isn’t the time to snipe at each other.

“Does he think it’s the firm or are you saying he’s going after Peter?” Derek asks.

“The firm. Peter wasn’t high enough in the ranks when this went down,” Stiles says after a second. “But now that you’ve stuck your nose in it, he and his people might think your family is involved.”

“What about Mom?” Cora says.

Stiles shrugs. “Nothing on her yet, but these people aren’t picky. And also, since you were over at Scott’s place, they might think you’re friends with us, which ends the argument all by itself.”

“Well, your dad’s the sheriff, why don’t you just get them arrested?” Derek asks.

“Okay, honestly? You keep a machete under your bed and you’re asking me that?” Stiles says, irritated. Then he looks down like he just remembered he’s the one who has it. He spins it in his hand, then contemptuously flicks his wrist so that it falls forward, handle towards Derek. “Anyway, I can’t do that because now Scott’s chasing him because he’s fucking _worried_ about this guy here and Allison, and there’s going to be some fucking showdown because Scott. And your _mom_ and _uncle_ and Allison’s parents have been rotating in and out of the station trying to get charges pressed so all the cops are busy. So it’s simple math, folks—Scott texted me ten minutes ago saying he was going to do this, and it’s a fifteen-minute drive from here and a thirty-minute one from the police station.”

“Listen, it’s not our fault that you have beef with this guy,” Cora says. She jumps a little when Stiles looks at her, but keeps her chin up. “And anyway, you could be making that up and just trying to get us outside to punk us or whatever, we don’t have anything to know that you’re telling the truth. And why would you ask us to help out if this guy’s so dangerous and—”

“Because your family’s tying up everybody else and I thought you’d at least fucking _care_ Scott’s going to get himself killed for your asses?” Stiles snaps. He gets out of the chair and shoves it to the side and then storms back to the window, then looks back. He doesn’t seem to have noticed that Derek and Cora have frozen again. “We had a whole plan and now he’s ditching it because he’s so afraid he’s gotten you in trouble, and I hope you give yourself a big fat high-five for that. Also, I was just going to have you help me get _Scott_ , not deal with Blackwood. Because yeah, this _isn’t_ amateur hour.”

He’s actually going to leave, Derek thinks, watching Stiles put one foot up on the sill. Then a noise makes Derek look over and he meets Cora’s eyes. She has her hand up, fingers loosely balled, and she moves it and it could be going all the way into a fist, aimed at Stiles, but then she moves it again and it could be going to cover her mouth. They’re neither of them actually big on sticking their necks out when it’s not necessary, but they’re also not the coldblooded gang that the rest of the town likes to act they are. 

And Derek _shouldn’t_ have been at Scott’s house. Fuck.

“Wait,” he says, and Stiles turns around. “What do you mean, get Scott? Where is he?”

* * *

“Golf.” Cora slouches in the backseat of Stiles’ car—allegedly, considering Stiles had to adjust the rearview mirror when they got in—and stares out at the darkened course. “ _Golf._ Like, real golf. No windmills.”

“Look, just be glad we’ve got a reason to carry around blunt objects,” Stiles mutters. He puts the car into park and then gets out and goes around to pop the back. By the time Derek gets there, he’s got a bag of actual goddamn clubs leaning against the bunker and has his head down trying to get something at the back of the trunk.

At least, that’s what it looks like, but then Stiles straightens up, shirtless, and Derek realizes the guy was just stripping.

“You know, if you’re that interested, I’ll DM you later,” Stiles says, and then snorts as Derek grimaces. He picks up the bag and pulls out two clubs, then slings it over his shoulder. “Here.”

Derek takes the club he’s given, and then moves aside for Cora, who gets one too. They’re both woods, and he glances at the bag and notices that all of those are woods. Wouldn’t the metal ones be better?

“What the hell,” Cora says, before he can ask. She’s staring at Stiles’ chest.

“What the hell yourself,” Stiles says, slapping down the trunk. He tosses the car keys to Derek, who is so startled he barely catches them, and then starts walking out onto the course. “Look, this might be a little messy, and I really like that shirt. That’s all. It’s not like I’m suggesting either of you join in, though that is a really nice leather coat there.”

Derek does not take off the coat, and in fact, pulls it on tighter as he heads after the other man. For the first few steps he carries the club in his hand, but he’s got the machete in his other hand and having something in both hands actually makes him feel less secure, since he knows he’ll have to drop one of them before he can do anything serious. So he tries a couple different options and finally settles on holding both of them in the same hand. It works so long as he chokes up on the club so he’s holding the thinner middle shaft. 

“Why is it going to be messy?” Cora mutters. “I thought you said we were just going to get Scott.”

“Because we are, and Scott said this meet-up was going to happen over by the fifteenth hole, which has a big pond by it. Which means Scott’s going to fall in, because he never met a body of water he couldn’t trip over,” Stiles mutters back. They come to a fork in the path and then he suddenly doglegs right, leaving Derek and Cora by themselves in the dark.

Peter and their mom both go to social events at the country club, so they’ve been here before. Derek even got strong-armed into joining a putting contest once. And anyway, a golf course is mostly open space with few things blocking the view, so it’s not like the preserve where the trees could actually keep you from seeing something (like a wolf, Derek’s mind whispers) until it’s basically choking you out. The gun Peter gave Derek is still in Derek’s car, back at their house, and he keeps thinking about it.

“I was pretty sure they knew each other before,” Cora says under her breath.

“What?” Derek says.

“They knew each other. Before they moved here.” Cora shifts a little closer to Derek, twisting the club in her hand. Then she swings it up to hook over her shoulders, nearly taking out his ear. “Hey, back up.”

“You’re the one…” Then Derek drops it, because it’s pointless with her, and looks around. He doesn’t see anyone else around. It’s not actually that hard to see, clear night sky and big full moon, but he still has this creeping feeling that he’s missing something right in front of his face. “So?”

Cora looks irritably at him. “So whatever they’ve been doing, it’s been going on a while.”

Sometimes Derek gets why Peter gets so annoyed with them. “I kind of figured that one out already.”

She’s going to smack him, and then a sudden growling noise makes them both swing around. “Oh, cool, your reflexes are still working,” Stiles says a moment later, not mocking, just calm and maybe a little impressed, when he drives up in a golf cart. “Get on. Hopefully we drive up, give ol’ Scott a good scolding about his hero tendencies, and all go-kart back before anyone even notices you’re gone.”

None of them think that’s likely, Derek can tell, but Cora gets in beside Stiles and Derek stands up on the back end. He sticks the machete and his club into the storage compartment at the back, then thinks the better of it and tries to take one back out. But Stiles starts up the cart just then, so instead of the machete, Derek gets the club—probably just as well, since the way Stiles drives, if it’d been the machete, Derek would have sliced himself a couple times along the way.

“So they were supposed to meet and ‘talk it out’ somewhere around there,” Stiles says a few minutes later. 

He parks right in front of a footbridge that crosses the pond, then hops out and gestures at the far side. There’s a small wooden building with a roof that extends out over a bench. It looks a little too small, and when they get over, it turns out it’s not a set of toilets or anything like that, that could house a person. It’s just to cover up a vending machine so it looks as countrified as everything else.

“Talk it out?” Derek says, and then realizes something.

He’s still on the footbridge, but Stiles keeps on going. Derek takes another step, then stops and turns around to look back towards the cart, where Cora is still standing. She moves her club and maybe she’s trying to gesture at him, but he has no idea what that’s supposed to mean. He waves for her to come on, but she doesn’t come, and he doesn’t have any idea about that either. Is she chickening out now?”

“Yeah, Scott, I love him, but he just thinks everybody will listen to reason if he just tries hard enough,” Stiles says. He goes far enough around the vending machine hut to look around the other side, then comes back a few feet. He doesn’t seem to have noticed about Cora yet, and instead is staring off towards the next hole. “He’s always been like that. When we were five, somebody shoved me over his sandcastle and he stood up and said don’t do that, if you want to play too, you can have my shovel.”

Derek glances back at Cora, making a more forceful come-on gesture. She takes a step forward but then reaches back towards the cart. She’s jabbing her finger at it and mouthing something, like Derek can read lips from that far. Then he twists back, hearing gravel roll, but Stiles is still checking out the next hole. “Did that work?”

“Are you kidding? He got shoved over too, and you know what settled that one? My shovel, that’s what,” Stiles says, miming a swing with his hands.

He doesn’t have the clubs. They’re back in the cart. Derek looks back at Cora and lifts his club—and _shit_ , Derek forgot the machete too—and Cora throws up her hands like he just won a prize and she’s going to cram it down his throat.

“Anyway, I figure you show your pretty face, we remind him that he doesn’t just have to deal with this one by himself, and we can all go home and make like we were streaming _Game of Thrones_ all night,” Stiles sighs. He’s standing with his weight back on one foot, one hand up like he’s shading his eyes to see, even though it’s the middle of the—oh, he’s just scratching the side of his face. “I really love him, but God, sometimes I want to…”

Derek is only half-listening now, more preoccupied with gesturing for Cora to just grab the bag and the machete and _bring them with her_ , as if she doesn’t have a whole free arm to do that with. She keeps motioning back like this is, in fact, a big deal, and Derek is just thinking he’s going to give up on this covert stuff and yell for her to do it when Stiles suddenly slams into him.

“Go, go, God, are you deaf?” Stiles yells.

He and Derek roll into the bridge’s rail and Derek’s foot comes off the ground and for a second there’s that sick free-swinging feel and the water looks black. And then fingers close around his arm and Stiles literally throws Derek off the bridge.

Onto the ground. Derek hits and his knee goes numb, and he’s with it enough to know that’s not going to end well so he keeps himself moving. He gets halfway up onto his feet before the pain drops, and almost mostly turned around. And that’s when he sees the. The.

“Goddamn Derek it _is going to murder us_ ,” blares Cora’s voice in his ear, just before she hooks him under the arm and drags him up. 

They stumble back one step and then the thing on the bridge turns around and growls, a living, animal noise, and it is a wolf and it is much bigger than any nature doc ever made them look and the muscles around its shoulders shift as it moves towards them and they look like fucking iron plates. Derek really should have brought the fucking gun, and fuck his school record.

It jumps. He shoves Cora away and pivots—stumbles because his knee blows out—but it’s enough to get him out from under where it’ll land and he gets his club up for a swing at its leg. Amazingly, he hits it.

Even more amazingly, the hit seems to do something. When the wolf lands, it’s a crash one, crumpling over with a weird muffled roar, and for a second Derek thinks he got it.

And then it stands back up and its eyes are glowing red and it is limping a little on the forelegs but that doesn’t matter when it goes up on its _hind legs_. And not in a circus-animal-trick kind of way either, but with muscles and tendons realigning and even the goddamn knees reversing direction, and now it’s a wolf-man. And it still wants to eat Derek, says its bared teeth.

Derek hikes up the club, because that’s what he _has_ , and the wolfman flinches as something flies by Derek’s head: Cora’s club. She’s retreated back to the cart and as the wolfman turns to her, she yanks out another club and tosses it javelin-like at its head.

The wolfman snags it out of the air by the handle, then brings it down. It breaks the thing in two, throws away the wooden head, and then flips the rest around so that the jagged end is aimed at Derek—and _another_ wolfman storms out of the pond and tackles it.

Derek doesn’t waste the moment and runs back up to the cart, where Cora’s still yanking clubs out of the bag. “What the hell,” he grunts, shoving her over and yanking out the machete.

“They’re all woods,” Cora half-says, half-shouts. “The wood, I think that’s the—Stiles was yelling before he got you—”

“Well, what, you gonna take his word for _anything_ right now?” Derek snaps, grabbing her by the arm. He drags her away from the bag, kicking through the clubs as they fall around their feet, and is about to push her into the cart when suddenly the cart isn’t there.

It’s over their heads, because a second wolfman has lifted it, Superman-style. Derek bites back his _what the fuck_ , then lets go of Cora and hopes she does the smart thing. He doesn’t have time to tell her to do it, because he’s busy ramming the machete into the wolfman’s chest as hard as he can.

Something hot and sticky falls over his hand, and he knows that smell. He gags and that saves him; he hears the click of teeth just over the top of his head. The wolfman’s breath is still threading through his hair as he drops the machete, twisting around and going left.

There’s a huge crunching crash and a human voice in the middle of it, and he thinks _sister_ and the sick in his throat—“get up, get up, Derek, why are you so fucking _heavy_ ”—goes down as Cora hauls him away from the wolfman. Who’s getting back up.

Awkward, leaning over on the side that has the machete sticking out. Derek wasn’t centered, it went in on the right and lower than the ribs. Not the chest at all, the gut. But that should be enough, he thinks, and then the wolfman pulls the machete out and the fluid that gushes out after it looks too watery and light-colored for blood, even in the dark. The wolfman staggers and Derek hears Cora hiss as he’s hissing.

Then the wolfman stands up. It’s not that it doesn’t hurt, says the look in its eyes as the wound just closes up. It _does_ hurt, and they’re going to feel just how much it hurts.

Which is when a second wolfman takes a golf club to its skull. 

“That’s Stiles,” Cora gasps.

The first one drops like a rock. Its arms flop a little, and then it twists like it is trying to crawl away, or turn over, or—Derek doesn’t get to find out because the other wolfman smashes the club into its head again. And again. And again.

The club breaks at one point. The wolfman stops, its shoulders angled in an oddly recognizable annoyed stance, and then it looks around. It hitches, excited about something, and stands up with another golf club and goes back to pounding.

“Stiles,” Cora says. Not gasping as fast now, but still sounding airless. Derek looks over and her eyes are glued to the rise and fall of the club. “Stiles. That one’s Stiles.”

“It’s okay,” gasps another voice. Scott, stumbling up towards them. Barely dressed, his clothes ripped to hell again, and what is left on him is soaking wet. He has his arm folded across his chest and dark smears all over him. “It’s okay.”

Behind him, there’s a dark, furred lump on the ground. It takes Derek a moment to figure out what he’s looking at, because the lines are—wrong. The spine is bent out where it should be bent in, and the thing draped in front of the legs is a tail, and he can’t tell if there’s still a head or if it’s just tucked down—except a head shouldn’t be able to tuck that far.

Well, then again, what the hell does he know about wolfman anatomy, he thinks, twisting back as Scott makes an odd hiccupping noise. Cora grabs Derek’s leg, a little too close to the knee he twisted, and he stifles his wince as she backs up against him. 

He puts his arm around Cora to help her back. Scott looks at both of them, recognition coming into his eyes. It’s tired and sad, and then Scott stops where he is and spreads his hands. “It’s okay, not going to hurt you,” he says.

He is _bleeding_ , Derek suddenly realizes, staring at all the cuts that Scott’s arm had been pressed up against, and that’s when Scott falls on his face in the grass.

“Oh, shit, _Scott_ ,” comes a strange, half-graveled voice.

Derek looks over in time to see the bloodied club drop and the fur peel back—it’s like watching a glove turn inside out—into smooth skin. Then Stiles is on his knees next to Scott, cursing and pulling frantically at the other man’s limbs. He gets Scott over onto his side, curses again when he sees the damage, his voice dropping into a growl that makes Derek flinch, and then presses both hands against Scott’s chest.

“Shit, shit, shit, you stupid—you stupid _shit_ ,” Stiles says, his voice cracking. He’s banged-up himself, with a double set of claw-rakes down his back and a black eye, and even if he—whatever he and Scott are, they might be strong enough to lift golf carts, but when he tries to drag Scott onto his lap, he starts breathing hard.

Then his head snaps up and his eyes are glowing red and Derek stops where he is. “I’m—you can’t just hold him. That’s not going to help.”

“Like you know anything,” Stiles spits back.

Well, Derek doesn’t. But he stands there and Stiles bites his lip and stares back, and clearly does some very hard thinking.

“I think this one’s dead,” Cora says. She’s gone a couple yards over, and is peering from there at the one Scott took down. “I mean. Unless we have to do something. Like was that what you were yelling about the wood, do we need to—stick something in it? Like stab it in the heart?”

“No,” Stiles says, sounding almost hysterical. He’s not, he doesn’t have that kind of shake in his voice, but it rises sharply enough that you might not notice the difference. “No, we’re not vampires. And yeah, he’s dead—good fucking riddance. Look, if you want to go, do it now. It just gets messier from here.”

“I just asked you whether I had to make sure here,” Cora says, snotty, like she isn’t trembling all over and glad she doesn’t have to. “It’s not like we’re going to—”

“What,” Stiles says flatly. “What. You’re going to what.”

Derek takes a deep breath. And then wishes he hadn’t, because he can smell—even freshly dead, there’s a smell and he knows what it is. He told himself never again, and…he looks at the limp way Scott is draped over Stiles’ lap. “We have to deal with this,” he says, catching Stiles’ eye. Then he points out the bodies. “ _This_. We’re not as fucking stupid as you think, okay, we know this kind of thing, you don’t just walk—so what do we have to do? Do you—that guy healed, I stabbed him and he _healed_ —”

“But they’re not, they’re bleeding,” Cora says, coming over. To Derek, not to Stiles, and she tucks her hand around Derek’s arm before she goes on. She’s pale, even if she doesn’t avert her eyes from the blood slicking down Stiles’ back into what’s left of his pants. “You are. So you—”

“Need to sleep it off,” Stiles says. 

They stare at him.

“Yeah, look, this is _not normal_ , so get over it and just start doing what I actually say, would you?” Stiles says. His shoulders bunch and then spread like he’s snapping at them, but the tone that actually comes out is weary and resigned. “Okay, fine. You’re in, and nobody can say I didn’t warn you. So go get another golf cart. Scott’s not going to die, but we need to get him away from here. Okay?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Stiles here isn't _quite_ the S1 Peter of this universe, but by God, he's having fun with it. No, seriously, the role-reversal tag is there for a reason. I think role-reversal AUs are one of the hardest to pull off believably, because for it to work you have to do more than just switch the characters who are speaking the lines everybody quotes. You need to switch them and keep their personalities recognizable while somehow trying to hit similar enough plot beats that the role-reversal is apparent. And Stiles is really smart and thinks laterally and all that, but sometimes laterally gets you an impressive Xanatos Gambit and sometimes laterally gets you a Gordian Knot that somebody else chops through. Which is a problem Peter is not unfamiliar with.
> 
> The golf clubs have heads made of mountain ash, if you hadn't gathered. Per the show (insert my usual observations about inconsistent mythology), this creates some weird force-field action for werewolves, but the force field appears to have a limited range, and also doesn't appear to keep werewolves from using other objects to get through it. We just see Peter and Deucalion tossing stuff over mountain-ash barriers, but there doesn't appear to be any reason why a werewolf couldn't use an object to touch mountain ash. And if that's true, then no reason why they can't use an object to lift a piece of mountain ash. 
> 
> We're also going with the whole idea that the clothes don't shift with the werewolf.


	5. Chapter 5

Okay, so Derek and Cora get a golf-cart. It’s a fifteen-minute walk back to the main building to find one and Derek found the machete and Cora has every club she could carry, and they still are jumping at everything. And it doesn’t get much better when they manage to drag Scott to Stiles’ car and there’s a police car with the lights off waiting for them in the parking lot.

Much to Derek’s surprise, it’s not Stiles’ dad. It’s a tight-lipped woman who isn’t even in uniform, but who has a very large, clearly very full duffel bag with her. “Fifteenth hole,” Stiles says to her. “Thanks, Braeden.”

“I’m going to talk to Melissa after,” the woman mutters.

Stiles winces, but doesn’t stop as he gets into the backseat with Derek and Scott. Cora drives, since she’s the least filthy. They’re going to Stiles’ house, since there is no way Derek wants to talk to Laura at this hour, and it sounds like Stiles would be just as happy to avoid the hospital.

“Hey,” Derek says, looking over at one point. “ _Hey_.”

“What,” Stiles says irritably, his eyes still closed, head lolling a little where he’s got it leaned against the top of the backseat. “I told you, sleep it off. Alpha-on-alpha, you can clean things up a little with wolfsbane and chug some protein shakes for the building blocks, but there’s not really much else you can do.”

Derek looks into the rearview mirror and Cora shrugs. “I have no idea what that means.”

“It _means_ , when we get there, fold out the couch and put us down on it and then stick to the kitchen because I can’t keep the house from killing you if I’m passed out,” Stiles mutters. “And I would be sad for a second, because you’re kind of helpful, even if there’s a transmission delay, but since I’m warning you I’m not going to feel that guilty.”

“So if we break in to do that, those boobytraps aren’t going to get us first?” Derek says.

Stiles’ eyes crack open. “Oh. You remembered. Great. So use my house keys.”

Then he…goes to sleep. A few minutes later, they’re at his house and Derek is trying to get Scott out of the backseat without pulling open the guy’s wounds any more than they already are. They’ve mostly stopped bleeding, as far as Derek can tell—once they’d gotten to the car, Stiles had wrapped some bandages around Scott’s middle but had seemed uninterested in doing the limbs, or in taking suggestions—but now they’re moist-looking and dark, almost black. It doesn’t look like scabbing to Derek and he doesn’t want to find out what it really is, or what might seep up from under it.

“Which keys,” Cora says, shaking the keyring. “There are—half of these aren’t even keys. These look like those charm things you get at Ren Faire.”

The problem is, Derek discovers when he crawls back into the backseat, Stiles has a death-grip on Scott’s arm. Derek puts his hand on Stiles’ wrist and the guy’s upper lip promptly peels up to show a fang.

“It’ll be just perfect if we get them all the way here and then there’s some exploding pipe bomb in my face…are you listening?” Cora says.

Nothing else happens, and after a second, Stiles’ lips push together again. It might be some bizarre reflex, Derek thinks as he cautiously pokes Stiles’ wrist. He can’t get both of them out at the same time; they might not look that heavy, but they both weigh a ton. It’s like…

…like maybe they have a bunch of muscle and bone and fur that is invisible except when they’re killing people. For a second, Derek considers his life decisions over the last few days, and then Scott stirs, face twisting up in pain as he shivers. He doesn’t wake up, but he does move enough to get Stiles to let go.

“Oh, never mind,” Cora says, and Derek finally looks over. “There’s a little ‘house’ charm on this one. So that’s probably right, or is that too normal for Stiles?”

“You’re the one who has AP Chem with him,” Derek mutters. He uses his forearm to nudge Stiles a little further off of Scott, then gets his arms under Scott and hefts.

By the time he maneuvers out of the backseat, Cora has the door open and has gone inside, and since she’s still providing commentary, Derek assumes no boobytraps have been set off. The place is bigger than the house Scott and his mother are renting, and looks a lot more lived-in, although Derek almost pitches over a random cardboard box in the hallway.

He gets around it and then he’s in the living room, where Cora has for once thought about the best way to cooperate and has just finished taking the cushions off the couch. She tugs out the foldout and then Derek slides Scott onto it, just as she starts to say something.

“You don’t think we should get some sheets down?” Cora says when Derek looks over. “I mean, I don’t think you can dry-clean that.”

Derek glances down at Scott, who’s rolled over onto his side and left a vaguely human-shaped stain behind. It’s crusty rust-brown in parts, sticky dark brown in others, and there are a couple clumps of some kind of knotted-up leafy stuff. Pondweed, maybe. The foldout comes with a sheet over it but it’s about as thick as tissue-paper.

“If they have somebody to call for bodies, you don’t think they can figure that out?” Derek finally says. Yeah, it’s probably not a good thing, but he’s exhausted at this point, and he still has Stiles to get in.

Cora opens her mouth, then closes it and looks hard at him. Her shoulders are pulled in and when she folds her arms over her chest, she has to move her elbows out to do it, they’re so tightly tucked into her ribs. She shrugs and sits down on the armchair across from the couch. “Somebody should text Laura, see if Mom and Peter have noticed yet.”

“Okay,” Derek says, and turns around. She’s got her phone.

Stiles is slightly lighter than Scott but somehow his limbs seem longer and floppier, and every time they even brush something, his upper lip twitches. By the time Derek gets him down on the foldout, Derek’s shoulders are spasming from tensing up so much. 

Derek just keeps on going down, sitting beside the mattress. He watches Stiles’ legs hike up in small jerks, him and Scott rolling up against each other, and then realizes how hard he’s breathing. His own legs feel like the bones have been replaced with jelly, and his thighs and arms aren’t burning so much as curling up into ash, from the feel of it. He stays up for another second, then gives in and flops onto his back.

“You’re pretty dirty too, you know,” comes Cora’s voice.

“I literally do not care,” Derek mutters. He puts one arm over his eyes, wishing the light wasn’t so…light. He doesn’t really want to think about anything right now, except maybe sleeping.

And that’s when the memory of the skull caving in under the golf club flashes through his head. Derek jerks his arm off his eyes and stares at the ceiling, and then swallows back the sour taste in his mouth.

“Laura says she hasn’t heard from Mom or Peter in a couple hours,” Cora says. Then she gets off her chair and comes around and stands over Derek, so he stops trying to get up. “Look, I think one of us needs to go talk to her. She’s freaking out—the police called in to warn the hospital that there’s some kind of in-progress situation at the preserve and things are in lock-down, so that’s why she can’t get hold of them.”

“If they’re in lock-down, then they’re at the station. Right?” Derek says. “So nowhere near the preserve.”

Cora shrugs. Her face has that slight oily sheen you get when you’ve been up hours and hours, and she keeps biting her lower lip. “Yeah, but you know, Laura. She was going to drive _here_.”

Derek sits up. “No.”

“Yeah, I _know_ , but somebody’s gotta calm her down,” Cora says irritably. She pockets her phone and starts yanking her hair back from her face, like she’s going to put it into a ponytail, and then abruptly drops her hands to slap against her hips. “I don’t want to fucking go, let’s be clear. But she’s gonna come, and also, Scott’s mom is at the hospital and I just think, if we’re gonna take sides in this thing—”

“Wait, wait. Wait a second, when the hell did that come up? Are you kid—do you know what Mom and Peter will do? Are doing?” Derek snaps at her. “Look, we almost got killed, so it’s just not leaving them there, but if you think for a second that this is a good idea—”

“I’m _not_ saying it’s a good idea!” Cora nearly shouts back. “I’m just saying we’re in a house with two gigantic homicidal wolf people and Laura wants to come over! And if we don’t stop her, I don’t know what the hell _she’ll_ do! You know she freaks out!”

She does. She can keep a secret once she’s gotten over the initial freakout, but of Derek’s sisters, if he was going to go with one of them to handle the shitshow this night has been—he presses the heel of his hand into the top of his nose, trying to think. “We can’t just go, they’re still messed-up and you remember how that one just walked right into Scott’s house—”

“Maybe Stiles has better boobytraps. I mean, if I was going to hire somebody to turn my place into a murder house,” Cora says.

That’s…it might be a good point. Or it might not. She’s as tired as he is, and when Derek looks over at the foldout mattress and the two bodies sprawled over it, he just…

He just doesn’t want it to be his fault, whatever the hell happens. “Fine. You go. I’ll stay—you text me every couple minutes till you get here, and then have Laura text me.”

Cora doesn’t move. “It’s a six, seven-minute drive from here.”

“So?” Derek says, looking back at her.

“Then what are you going to do if something happens? Run after me? There’s just one car,” Cora says, voice rising incredulously. “And what if they wake up and murder you? Stiles doesn’t really strike me as the grateful type. I’m not driving anywhere near the preserve, at least.”

“Look, you do—whatever. I just told you,” Derek mutters. He doesn’t want to argue. He doesn’t want to do anything, honestly, except lie back down and stare at the ceiling till his brain goes numb. “Scott’s mom is at the hospital, right? If you and Laura can find her, maybe you can explain we helped and also Mom and Peter’s going to come looking sooner or later.”

“I don’t know if even Peter,” Cora says, because finishing sentences is apparently beyond her right now.

Derek lies back down. After a second, he puts his hand over his face. He hears Cora breathing, and then she makes a sharp, curt noise and stalks off. She goes to the other side of the room, comes back, goes out and is gone long enough that Derek moves his hand, and then she’s back with a bottle of water in either hand.

“Stay hydrated, dumbass,” she says, stabbing the bottles down on the nearest table. “It’s like you never were varsity.”

And then she heads off towards the garage. Derek pushes himself back up, slow and painful—his body really thinks it’s done now, and is full of aches and cramps—and stares off in that direction. The thoughts in his head feel like trying to put Legos together in the middle of a jar of molasses.

He finally rolls up onto one knee, only to hear the car engine. After a second, Derek keeps moving, but just over to where he threw his coat. He gets his phone out of the pocket, then settles against a table-leg and flicks through his newsfeed till Cora’s texts start coming in. Some of the odds on the upcoming World Cup look pretty good, and he bookmarks them to track for later.

Laura finally sends a text, saying Cora’s with her and she doesn’t believe jack shit about this story and to just come clean already, she knows people in Vegas too. Rolling his eyes, Derek sends her a singing Elvis GIF and then puts his phone aside. He’s gross, he needs a shower. And maybe it’ll clear his head.

He doesn’t forget about what Stiles said about boobytraps, but he figures anything in plain sight should be safe. There’s a bathroom on the first floor, obviously the guest one from the little Pacman-shaped soaps by the sink, and it’s got a towel on the rack. Which is half the size of a regular towel and which has decorative flower embroidery that only matches the rest of the room because of the color of the leaves, but he can work with that. Or air-dry, since it’s not like he’s leaving any time soon.

The water is hot and feels amazing. He grinds most of a Pacman away scrubbing himself off, accidentally opening up some scrapes in the process, and then he drops the sliver that’s left onto the drain and just leans on his arms against the wall. The sting of the scrapes eventually drowns out amid the soft press of the steam, flowing into the long, soothing rivulets running down his back and legs.

“Fuck,” Derek mumbles into his forearm. He presses his forehead against it, then his eyes. Then his forehead again, as he takes a deep breath. “So fucked, _fuck_. Fuck.”

When he turns off the water and pulls the curtain aside, Stiles is standing there.

“You’re pretty jumpy for a guy who doesn’t ask where the bodies are going to go,” Stiles says. He doesn’t move to help as Derek stumbles and slips and barely keeps on his feet by grabbing the soap dish glued to the wall behind him, but once Derek is steady, Stiles offers a bigger, fluffier towel than the existing one. “Also, for the record, I _am_ actually the grateful type, I just maybe don’t pick off the traditional gift lists.”

Water runs into Derek’s eyes. He grimaces and swipes it away, and Stiles is still there. A little cleaner, maybe he wiped himself down with paper towels or something, with flushed fresh-looking scars where the slashes and raw places had been. And rolling his eyes and tossing the towel at Derek, so Derek starts and half-falls out of the shower.

By the time Derek’s righted himself, Stiles has slid past him and has the shower on again. He takes down the showerhead attachment and crouches in the tub, raking off the dirt with curved fingers and no soap. “Telling Scott’s mom probably is a good idea,” he says, just quietly enough that Derek’s not sure he’s really trying to talk. “When _she_ decides to take somebody out, we usually don’t even have anything to bury.”

Derek doesn’t bother asking how much Stiles overheard. “Werewolves?”

Stiles looks up, blinking, like he wasn’t expecting that subject change. He looks weirdly young like that—then Derek corrects himself, because the guy _is_ young, it just doesn’t seem to come up with the way he acts most of the time. “Oh, you’re not gonna go with Sasquatch?”

“I’m pretty sure I didn’t see gorilla men. There were tails,” Derek mutters. He gives his face and hair and neck a rough scruffing, then slings the towel around his waist. He’s still dripping all over, but it feels weird to keep wiping himself in front of Stiles. Nothing to do with gay panic, he just…

He just doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing and Stiles has made it abundantly clear he does, and Derek is usually not in this position. He’s not big on it. He also doesn’t know what to do about it.

“Well, okay, yeah. Werewolves.” Stiles stands up and frowns down at his tattered pants, then just undoes the fly and lets the rags drop off him. They’re so sodden with blood and water that they do that without needing any pushes. He spritzes between his legs, then turns off the water and puts the showerhead back in place. “So, what’s the deal with you? Organized crime? You the enforcer for your generation?”

“Why the hell does everybody think that?” Derek can’t help snapping. “Just because I wear a fucking leather coat—and pro poker’s televised now. It’s a fucking sport, not a gangster thing. It’s just kind of a job, okay? That I’m good at. Pe—my family doesn’t even like it that much, they think I should get a degree and go work in an office or something.”

Stiles’ brows twitch but he doesn’t say anything. He just steps out of the tub and takes the flower towel off the rack, using it to pat himself here and there. A couple times he pauses and examines a scar, tugging at its edges like he’s trying to see how thin the skin is. He’s doing that thing where you just let people sit in how ridiculous they sound—Peter does this a lot—and it’s annoying that he seems to know it works on Derek.

“I’ve just seen dead people before,” Derek finally mutters.

“Yeah, noticed, what with the complete lack of newbie-level behavior and all,” Stiles says. “Can’t really blame me for assuming, can you?”

And suddenly Derek’s pissed off. “I can blame you for a hell of a lot,” he says under his breath, turning away.

Then he’s up against the wall, air pressed out of him, feeling the wood vibrating at his back as Stiles presses up into his face. Red-eyed again, grinning with his teeth showing when Derek tries and fails to push him off. To even make him budge, despite the fact that he’s thinner and shorter, that Derek can fucking see how he has to stretch a little so he can pin his knees into Derek’s legs and Derek is pushing as hard as he can and it’s like pushing into a concrete wall.

“Listen, you entitled meathead, I asked—I _told_ you, I told you you had a chance to walk and you didn’t and you have to live with that now,” Stiles seethes into his face. It’s not a grin, Derek suddenly thinks. He watched a nature doc once, that talked about how for some animals, baring the teeth is a threat. “So you can just _drop_ this little, sad, only if I feel like it act. You want to get through this, first thing, you stop like _you_ get to lay out the terms of engagement, okay?”

“I—you fucking—you’re fucking after me and my family and I don’t even know—what the _fuck_ is this werewolves thing anyway—” Derek spits back. Shoving isn’t going to work, Stiles is too strong, but Derek keeps trying anyway. The floor’s wet, he can feel his feet slipping on it, and then his toes lose their grip.

He lets himself drop, then wrenches sideways when he feels the weight shift against Stiles’ grip on his arms. It works for about an inch of space and then Stiles smacks him back up against the wall. Derek’s head snaps against the drywall and he hisses, feeling flakes of plaster pattering down to stick in his hair. He shakes his head and then hisses again as Stiles’ fingers dig into the tendons of his wrists, pinning them up over his shoulders. 

“I don’t even fucking _know_ what my family did to you,” he gasps. 

A bony, unforgiving kneecap digs into the meat of his thigh, high enough that he jerks on instinct, and ends up having to splay his legs as Stiles jams himself between them like he’s trying to shove his entire fucking hipbone up Derek’s—Derek freezes.

“You know, it’s actually _not_ your family,” Stiles says, almost tracing the words on Derek’s eyeball, he’s breathing so close. “We figured that out. I can’t even believe it, since—but nope, you all really have no clue. You don’t know packs or hunters or even _magic_ , and—yeah. Not your fault. Collateral damage, sorry. It happens.”

Towel, where did the towel go, and then Derek shakes his head because least important things. “What, are you—so it’s not just werewolves?”

“Nope. And here’s the thing, Derek: it’s not like you can just stop. You see werewolves, you’re gonna see other things. See, Scott and I, we usually ask,” Stiles says. He’s not even breathing hard. He’s just as casual about this as when he was showering himself off. “Well, okay, Scott asks. I usually just try to stick with the cover story, because honestly, people love those. They’d rather just go with it, and you just gotta give them something to hook onto it and a little, you know, motivation, right? But…yeah. So you think you can just pretend this is like one of those things Peter buries for you?”

“I wasn’t fucking anyway,” Derek manages to grit out. “It’s not my things he does.”

Stiles doesn’t immediately answer that. Derek is slow to pick up on it, with them pressed together and the damp on their bodies quickly turning to stick in the heat, pulling at their skin and then giving with a hot sting whenever Stiles feels like moving. Because Derek’s not moving, and—shit, what he just said.

“I play poker, all right?” Derek snaps. “And if professors are dropping in, then the rules don’t really matter, do they? So one game somebody cheats, and I deal with it and then when their fucking family decides to have me messed up, if you want to talk about being a gangster, I deal with it _again_ and the dean’s just pissed off he lost a donor when he should really fucking look at where that money for that lab came from—”

“I kind of thought it looked like it went back pretty far. Peter’s been at this a while, hasn’t he?” Stiles says suddenly, in a low, musing tone. He’s not even looking at Derek. “No way he just started getting into it.”

“Peter just keeps our family out of trouble. He didn’t do anything himself,” Derek says before he thinks. Then he sucks his breath. Tries to think. “Look. If we don’t know about this werewolf stuff—and we said we’d shut up about what happened at the golf course. I don’t think we want to get—I get that we can’t not know, but we don’t want—whatever you think we want—”

And Stiles’ attention is back on Derek. He grins again, stretching his head and neck, acting as if their height difference really means anything. “Oh, really?” 

He shifts against Derek, his legs sliding against Derek’s knees. Leans in, sniffs right in Derek’s face—it should come off as bizarre but for some reason a sharp, sudden tremor goes through Derek, from chin down to his hips. The shaking twists him against Stiles, and he knows what the other man’s going after now, knows it and knows he’s fucking _stuck_.

“You know, you’ve been smelling like it on and off since we met,” Stiles says suddenly, sounding like this is supposed to be reassuring. “That and being pissed off for you, seems like it’s your emotional PB&J. Which is actually a pretty common reaction to me, as far as I can tell.”

“Fuck you,” Derek mutters.

Stiles laughs at him. “This works for you? I mean, okay—I have eyes, it kind of does.”

And he’s just watching Derek squirm. The way his arms are bent, he’s not trying that hard to keep Derek in place and for him it’s just watching, like this doesn’t even matter either. Like anyone they do is just a sideshow to whatever he has going on, and while Derek should just go with that, take less attention…it just ticks Derek off. He’s already overheated, he knows that too. Too hot, too tired, not thinking straight and here’s this asshole making fun of him for backing into some giant mess that could involve his whole family and—and the least Stiles could do, goes Derek’s messed-up logic right then, is fucking _stop smiling about it._

Derek can move his head. He jerks it forward and kisses the other man.

It does catch Stiles off-guard. His lips are slack enough that Derek can shove his tongue past them, and okay, it’s not so much a kiss as a power move, and if either of Derek’s sisters were here, they’d be laying into him about that kind of asshole male shit.

But they’re not, and Stiles takes a flat second to get over and lean in and take things over, just as easily as he got Derek up against the wall. Derek thinks _wait this isn’t_ and Stiles senses it, there’s some kind of super werewolf sense going on with the super-strength, and his tongue runs the ridges across the top of Derek’s mouth, right as his belly grinds down against Derek’s cock. The thoughts in Derek’s head jitter apart, so he can still feel them but they can’t string up into an actual order to his body, and when he tries to breathe, get some cold air in, something pointed catches at his lip.

He freezes. Stiles makes a low sound, so low it doesn’t even seem to come from the man’s throat, low and like the pass of fingers through a pan of gravel. The skin over Derek’s back and sides prickles like that’s where the gravel is, that’s where the fingers are running, and Stiles makes the noise again, kissing harder. His teeth aren’t actually pointed, Derek can feel them and Derek thinks he was imagining that and then Stiles lets his mouth run down to the side his neck, sucks at the tendon. Lets it run further, to the top of Derek’s shoulder, bites down and Derek _knows_ he wasn’t imagining it.

Fucking with him. Derek doesn’t think that, his head’s too muddy for thought right now. He feels it instead, a hook in the gut that jerks him up _into_ Stiles’ mouth, the mouth of the shit who’s biting him and making his dick twitch at it, twitch and rise and when Stiles pulls away, Derek hears himself moan and feels himself try to roll after the other man.

“Hey,” Stiles says, and something about his tone’s odd enough to cut through. “Look.”

“Stiles,” says somebody—Scott. Just inside the doorway, a little ashen from fatigue, looking as if this is not surprising at all. “Stiles, come on.”

“Look, he’s being—this whole, I’m going to be a dick so we focus on the wolf stuff and forget the _humans_ here decided to stalk us, back when it just looked like juvenile delinquency,” Stiles starts defensively, pushing back from Derek. He’s still got enough of a grip on Derek’s wrists so that Derek can’t pull them off the wall. “If you want to talk about choices.”

Scott flicks a look at Derek, and Derek gets the impression Scott would like a longer one, to check on things, but knows better than to give Stiles that much of a pause. “I know. I know, but you can’t just—this isn’t going to make you feel better.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Stiles says, his tone so savage that Derek tries to twist free, even though he knows he can’t.

Both Stiles and Scott stop and look at him, surprised. It’s different types of surprise—Stiles as if he thought Derek would go the other way, and maybe has a little more respect now, while Scott looks as if it never even occurred to him that somebody might get upset if he and Stiles got into a fight in front of them. Stiles actually loosens up on Derek’s wrists.

“Damn it,” Scott finally says. He presses his hand across his face and back over his hair. “Derek, listen, I’m sorry. This isn’t about you, this is about our—let me just talk to Stiles—”

“It’s not really gonna be a talk, I know, I’m just—but if it makes _you_ feel better,” Stiles mutters, his grip relaxing even more.

“Anyway, you have to be starving,” Scott says, a determined look coming onto his face. He reaches for Derek and takes Derek’s elbow, and pulls it down as Stiles finally releases Derek’s wrist. “There’s some frozen pizza in the—”

“Are you kidding me?” Derek says, and then grabs at Scott’s arm as, blinking, the other man steps back. “You looked like you got shredded, and you’re—are you even—”

The second he touches Scott, Stiles is yanking him back by the other arm, twisting it up behind his back. Scott lunges forward, getting his shoulder, and then momentum keeps all of three of them going. But the space is too small for this so they bang around, Scott trying to tell Stiles to stop and Stiles snapping back that Derek started it and if Scott’s going to let himself get _gutted_ right in front of him and for a second one of them has their hand up and it’s got fucking _claws_ on it and Derek is just trying to avoid that. With his arm locked up behind him, and Scott boxing him in from the front, and when they all end up on the floor, it’s a miracle Derek’s arm is still in its socket.

“Stiles, just _let him go_ ,” Scott is snarling, hands clamped on Derek’s shoulder and waist, half-straddling him and leaning over so Derek is staring straight up at the fangs in the other man’s mouth. “Stop it, I don’t want this, you don’t want it, you’re just mad—”

“Well, yeah, you almost got ripped in half by that asshole Ennis—”

“Ennis?” Derek grunts, and the other two immediately go still. It’s a weird, tense stillness, one he doesn’t know how to read; he’s looking at Scott’s face and Scott isn’t quite looking down at him, mostly focused on Stiles, and somehow Derek gets the sense that’s an intentional tactic. “So wasn’t even—what’s his name—”

“Blackwood. Nope, just lackeys, and because Scott here thinks he’s gotta save the dumbass people who can’t even stay out of his _house_ ,” Stiles spits out.

Scott moves his lips but doesn’t actually say anything, and after a second, Stiles’ chest bumps up against the back of Derek’s head as the other man sighs. He pushes down on Derek’s arm, letting it straighten a few inches, and Derek immediately heaves and manages to get up a few inches before the feeling floods back in and he wants to cut it off.

He sags and Scott sticks his hands under Derek’s armpits, holding him up, and Scott and Stiles are starting to argue again and Derek’s suddenly got his nose to a thick pink scar running across Scott’s chest. “Shit, he did try to rip you in half,” Derek mutters.

Scott stops and looks down, frowning. Then he blushes a little. He moves back, his arm going across the scar. “Um, so, I don’t know if Stiles told you, but we heal so it’s not a big—”

“Were you actually trying to talk them out of going after me and Allison?” Derek asks.

“They don’t really want either of you,” Scott says after a second. “They just think you know—they’re after someone else that they think you know about, but we know you don’t, so if they knew that—”

“Are they the kind of people who give a shit? Because they didn’t look like that to me,” Derek says. He pushes himself a little further up with his free hand, and then something else catches his eye and he touches the raw red sore on Scott’s shoulder before the other man can cover it up. “You’re not even all…so this magic healing thing doesn’t cover everything.”

Scott grabs his hand. “It will, I just—oh.”

“Yeah, I kind of banged him up a little,” Stiles observes as Derek and Scott both look at the bruises circling Derek’s wrist. “Although honestly, he doesn’t seem to mind it that much.”

“Stiles,” Scott starts, finally sounding irritated, and Derek feels the other man tense behind him. Then Scott stops. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and then shakes his head and twists away. “You’re just trying to get somebody as mad at you as you are at yourself, and I’m just—I’m not going to do it. So—”

This time, when Derek reaches for him, Scott doesn’t really grab his arm so much as pin it mid-air. It hurts, sure, but Derek winces past that and then keeps his head up so that when Scott looks at what he’s done, they’re meeting each other’s eyes. “Look, whatever fight you two have going—I just—I’m sorry,” he tells Scott. “I’m sorry about getting you—I’m sorry.”

Scott blinks hard. He doesn’t completely let go of Derek’s arm, but he does let it sag to the ground so he’s leaning on their hands. “It wasn’t really about you.”

“Still, I’m—you were really torn up,” Derek says.

“Well, I’m better now,” Scott says, like that just is a thing that happens to him. 

Derek can’t help but look at those scars on his chest. Then he looks back up and Scott is staring at him, and—and behind them, Stiles is laughing again. Laughing, and then his breath is licking over Derek’s nape and down the back of his ear, and he’s pushing Derek up, his legs going out on either side of Derek as Scott bites his lip but doesn’t move back.

“Oh, come on, Scott,” Stiles is murmuring. “Come on, he’s been dying for it, smell him, take a deep breath. Smell him, he’s so _sorry_ he got you killing for him—”

Scott jerks hard at that, a flicker of almost-anger in his eyes as he looks past Derek. At the same time Stiles hikes Derek’s arm and Derek had forgotten Stiles still had that. Derek hisses, arching, and Scott’s eyes go back to him. To his shoulder, focusing on—Derek feels the blood flush into his face. 

“Stiles, you—seriously?” Scott says.

“He’s a fucking asshole,” Derek says.

For a second Derek thinks Scott might leave again and he—he does rock up after the other man, he does that. He doesn’t want Scott to go and he can’t exactly track why. Maybe he doesn’t want to. Okay, fine, he doesn’t. He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to know, he just wants Scott to stay put and for Stiles to shut up so maybe Derek can have one second to just—breathe or think or _breathe_ —

Scott reaches out and touches the spot on Derek’s shoulder Stiles had bitten. The skin isn’t broken but it’s strained, sensitive, and Derek sucks in his breath and Scott’s hand curves around the back of his head and then fingers are pressing at the inside of Derek’s thigh as, mouths locked, they press back into Stiles. Who is _enjoying_ this, whispering shit in Derek’s ear like this is the least he can do for Scott, this is barely anything, just lift that ass and spread those legs.

“Damn it, Stiles,” Scott mutters, peeling off, and Derek darts after him, sucks at his lower lip. He stops, a shudder going through him, and then sucks his breath and a little of it goes into Derek’s mouth, right before Scott kisses him again and just fucking shuts _up_ about Stiles.

Scott’s still dirty, flakes and crusts rubbing off whenever Derek tries to grip at him. Sometimes there are spots that make him wince and Derek has to move his hand—he tries Scott’s hip and shoulder and then knee, as Scott leans more over him, both hands knotted in Derek’s hair now, diving so deeply into Derek’s mouth that it’s like he’s following the breath down. And then both his arms get pulled back and he can’t get at Scott anymore.

“Hurt him enough, and he won’t ever speak up about it,” Stiles says, and when Derek jerks, twists, Stiles nuzzles up against his nape like they like each other. “So you have to _watch_ for that, you moron.”

Derek can’t talk, Scott still too busy with his mouth, and he’s not going to call that off to deal with Stiles who is a _werewolf_ who can lift an entire golf cart, if you want to talk about hurting and watching. No. Fuck Stiles. Instead he shifts as much as he can, crossing his legs behind Scott’s back, and Scott groans and drags his hands down Derek’s chest and stomach. When his fingertips hit the hair at the edge of Derek’s groin, Derek hitches up against the arms Stiles has twined around his elbows. He can straighten his own arms, just can’t pull them up farther than his sides. His fists keep hitting the floor.

And then Scott ducks down and closes his mouth around Derek’s cock and Derek’s fists stay on the floor. He grinds on them, twisting desperately as the other man sucks him into mindlessness. The way his pelvis is canted, he can’t move as much as he wants to, can’t follow hot suck of Scott’s mouth, and then Stiles laughs that damn laugh of his again. Laughs and Derek hears something about knowing exactly what he wants with that attitude, he’s just been looking this whole time, and then he’s crushed back against Stiles, and he knows that’s Stiles’ erection pressing into his back and when he bucks, it’s Scott’s hands holding his thighs down, keeping them still so he can’t chase and just has to take and take and then he can’t. He can’t.

He doesn’t really pass out, just has the world spin a few times and loses the sound, and then he’s chin-hooked over Scott’s shoulder, still gasping, sticky groin and stickier back, as Stiles bangs around in the cabinet under the sink. “I’m not saying that,” Stiles mutters, sounding annoyed. “I mean, his uncle’s actually kind of fun, it’s not like I’m really thinking collateral damage either, but there are ways to keep them out of it that don’t involve taking on _two_ of them at once. And snorkeling in the pond—”

“They didn’t smell me, did they?” Scott says. He sounds both guilty and playful at the same time.

The banging stops, and then Stiles sighs and Derek turns his head in time to see him leaning over the two of them, pressing his forehead against Scott’s. They both have their eyes closed and their lips are barely not-touching—and then they do, for a glancing second, as Stiles twists his head and backs up and looks down at Scott. “Okay, just because you listened to me on that _one_ thing…you know what, I’m tired of yelling at you. Lemme just get that handled for you and we can dump this guy—”

“What?” Derek mutters.

Scott starts. Stiles doesn’t exactly, but it takes him a moment to have a response. “Oh, back with us?” Stiles says. 

Derek makes himself lift his head off Scott, who hisses a little, hips trying to tip away as he flushes. 

“What,” Derek says, and Scott looks up at him, honestly embarrassed, and Derek damn near bites him, kissing him because. Because.

“I knew it,” Stiles is chortling in the background. “I knew it, knew it, he’s totally that kind of passive-aggressive.”

“Stiles,” Scott mumbles, breaking off the kiss. He makes a protesting noise when Derek promptly restarts it, but his hands are closing around Derek’s waist. They go slack when Derek deliberately grinds himself down on the other man’s cock, and then he pushes Derek back.

He doesn’t have to try any more to do that than Stiles does, and Derek does not even try to pretend like an electric-hot shiver isn’t going through him at that. And he wants it, he isn’t so good to keep it out of his face. 

“You can’t fucking tell me,” Derek grunts, and then somebody pushes against him. He freezes and Scott’s face—it starts to close up, Scott’s no liar but he can do that, he can and Derek doesn’t want that—and Derek makes a call. Leans back, splays his knees to make room for Stiles and, remembering, drops down to lick at Scott’s throat.

His tongue only gets about an inch before Scott, growling, shoulders trembling, forces him back. Scott has him by the back of the neck and it’s tight but not—Derek doesn’t feel like it would hurt him. It’s just stopping him, and when he looks down and sees Scott’s expression, he realizes that the difference between the two, the effort to make that difference, _that’s_ what’s making Scott shake.

“Oh, yes, yes,” Stiles is saying. He just won’t fucking stop talking, the asshole, talking as he pushes Derek’s buttocks apart, and when Derek can’t help a forwards hitch, he leans in so he’s mouthing at Derek’s neck as he talks and Scott’s eyes go to that and it is all deliberate as hell and it is fucking _burning_ the room. The room, Scott’s eyes, the way Scott breathes in and rolls his cock up against Derek’s belly as Derek gasps and twists in his grip. “Yes, you want this, you messed-up asshole, you know what you’re looking at. You don’t know werewolves but you know this, you know what you want and you want him fucking you, you want him just fucking laying you out and _fucking_ you—”

Scott’s eyes redden. Derek notices and goes still and in that second Scott rolls up off the floor and lifts him off Stiles’ fingers and is seated in him, all the way to the balls, before Derek can take a breath. And then Scott’s head is buried in Derek’s neck and Derek thinks _they have fangs_ and it still doesn’t matter because yeah, he is getting fucked and he wants that and he can’t move between Scott and Stiles, can’t move and the one’s splitting him from inside out and the other’s spreading him out for it, and he _wants that_ —

He does want it. He remembers that much.

* * *

The second time, he’s in such a daze that the fact he can still see light and shapes doesn’t really matter. Stiles is talking the whole damn time, but it occurs to Derek that he doesn’t have to listen to it, so he doesn’t.

They move out of the bathroom. He stops hearing Stiles, and then he stops hearing Scott, and eventually, Derek comes back to himself. 

He’s curled up on the edge of the foldout. The rest of it has stains marking out where Stiles and Scott had sprawled and he can smell them. He snorts into his hand, then sits up. Stops, lets it hurt, and then gingerly gets off the bed.

Derek is still naked, and kind of dirty. He thinks at first the bathroom is not a good idea, but then he hears voices in the kitchen and changes his mind.

The bathroom is empty. Somebody’s cleaned it up and changed the towel. He looks at that for a second, then decides he doesn’t need a whole shower, just a wipe-down, and then he looks at himself in the mirror.

“Shit,” he mutters. He glances down at himself, pokes one of the bruises on his thigh. Grimaces again, and then just…gets to it. Cleans himself up. Takes a piss while he’s at it, and then wraps the towel around himself and heads back to the living room.

When he gets there, Scott is sitting on one of the armchairs with some clothes in his lap and a hesitant expression. He’s dressed and cleaned up and looks almost normal, except for the uncombed hair and dark circles under his eyes. Derek pauses and they stare at each other. Then Scott picks up the clothes and puts them on the table, which is closer to Derek, and moves like he’s going to get off the armchair and suddenly Derek realizes what’s going on.

“I’m fine,” Derek says, walking into the room. He takes the clothes—they’re his own, just washed—and pulls the shirt over his head, then looks at Scott. 

He’d stopped right in front of the other man and Scott does not look that comfortable about it. But instead of trying to move past Derek and out of the room, Scott stands there and looks Derek over. Suppresses a sigh, and then awkwardly lifts his hand.

“It’s six in the morning,” Scott says. “Stiles’ dad is going to be home soon, and your…your sister called. She said you two have to be home by seven-thirty if you want to get there before your mom or your uncle.”

Derek makes a face. That means they know something, and best-case scenario, Derek gets home first so he has some time to…to make it look a little better. If that’s even possible.

“Listen, Stiles—he’s mad at me, not you,” Scott says.

“I thought it was both,” Derek says.

Scott winces. His hand goes back and he pushes at his hair, letting out that sigh he’d tried to kill. “He’s just…he just worries. This…it’s been years and we’ve lost people and…”

“He thinks I’m going to get you in trouble,” Derek says.

“I’m telling him to just leave that to me,” Scott says, looking up sharply. “He doesn’t run my life.”

Not that Scott likes the idea of going up against Stiles, Derek can tell. But this isn’t unfamiliar to the other man, Derek can also tell, because he knows that kind of family. “Wasn’t really what it looked like back there.”

“Well, it’s not—we’re not seeing each other. It’s just that werewolves, we…we live in groups. Packs. It’s like family, even if we aren’t related by blood. We watch out for each other,” Scott says after a moment. He hesitates, then takes a deep breath. “My dad left my mom, and we just had each other for a while and that’s really—it was rough for us. We’re supposed to be in bigger packs than that. She ran into Stiles’ family and they took us in, and then…Stiles’ mom got killed. It wouldn’t have happened if they hadn’t known us.”

Scott lays that out very simply, no whining or accusation, just stating facts of his life. Derek still hears what he’s saying about where the debts are. “My family—we don’t kill people,” Derek says. Watches Scott’s face; the man isn’t going to ask, and not because he thinks Derek is lying. He just…seems to know there might be reasons to not go into details. “Not just for business, or anything like that. It didn’t even happen more than—just because it had to happen, to keep us all safe. So I get it. If you were wondering why I’m not running off trying to get you arrested.”

“Oh,” Scott says. He’s also not that surprised to hear that, and there isn’t a speck of judgment in his eyes. He just takes that in as something to know. “Well—”

“I don’t want to talk about werewolves, but I need to know why they’re after my family,” Derek goes on. “Just so I can know how to keep them safe, and don’t just tell me you’ll take care of it. It’s not even—if you have to do it, you do it, and you don’t just count on other people, or being lucky, okay? That’s what I know. You saved me back there and I’m glad, but I’m not going to just sit there and take it for granted.”

For a few seconds Scott looks as if he doesn’t quite know what to do with that, and Derek feels the edge of irrational anger creeping up on him—and then Scott sighs, smiles. His mouth twists ruefully and he lifts his hand again, and Derek thinks—

Wasn’t reaching for him, Derek realizes only after he’s ducked forward and kissed the other man. But Scott is into it anyway—and then suddenly, he’s not.

“Sorry,” Scott mutters, pushing when Derek tries to lean in again. He doesn’t take his hand off Derek but he’s angling his body away. “I can’t—look, what happened with Stiles—I don’t think it’s going to work out.”

“I don’t want _him_ ,” Derek says. Then presses his lips together. He’s never going to be the smooth talker Peter is, but he could try to not sound so…dumb. “He just pissed me off.”

“Yeah, Stiles does that to people,” Scott says, smiling a little. Then he looks back at Derek. He presses his lips together like he doesn’t want to lean in, like his eyes aren’t getting darker as they drift down the side of Derek’s face and neck, but—

“Hello!” Stiles blares from the hall. And then walks in, grinning like he knows exactly what he’s interrupting. “We have a visitor! And seeing she’s got more firepower than even Dad, I figured we might wanna let her in, feed her breakfast.”

Irritated, Derek turns to tell Cora off and Allison is staring at him, hand halfway to her dropped jaw, wide eyes flicking up and down him. “Oh, my _God_ , Derek,” she says. “What happened to you?”

* * *

Derek tightens his jaw to hide the grimace as his ass reminds him a hard wooden seat’s the last thing it wants right now. “So that’s where Cora went,” he says. “How did you get out of the hospital?”

“It wasn’t actually that hard,” Allison says, idly stirring her cereal. Then she winces and switches hands; they didn’t give her a sling, but her arm is bandaged pretty thickly. “Keep forgetting…anyway, are you up on what else happened tonight? I mean last night?”

“No,” Derek says, while over in the living room, Stiles and Scott’s conversation quiets a little. He’s pretty sure at this point that really good hearing is on the table, and for a second thinks about just telling the other two to bring their breakfast back since it’s not like eavesdropping from there actually makes Derek feel any different.

Allison shrugs. “Well, can’t blame you, werewolves would keep me busy too.”

He ditches the idea because of Allison, since something about her calm makes Derek think she’s actually about to lose it, no matter how casually she’s talking and moving, but then she leans back in her seat and just flicks her spoon into her bowl. “You’re not asking whether I’m crazy?” he says.

“So my parents cornered Scott’s mom to threaten her into having Scott leave me alone, so she told them to shut it,” Allison says matter-of-factly. She stares straight ahead of her as the conversation in the living room completely dies. “Then there was some kind of fight and Scott’s mom _killed_ somebody, and turns out my grandfather? And Aunt Kate? Weren’t running a militia so much as some kind of bounty-hunting ring on supernatural people and they were doing _literal_ black magic voodoo and the people they were hunting really, really hated them for it. And hate my family now.”

Derek stares at her. Allison shakes herself, notices, and gives him a bright smile as she picks her spoon up again.

“At the hosp—”

“No, apparently, this happened in that spot next to it—you know, where they keep saying they’re going to build a new physical therapy center and don’t?” Allison says. “Because Scott’s mom was really pissed off so she was trying to go home, but my parents, being them, decided to follow her out into the parking lot. I think they actually managed to keep anyone from seeing the fight, somehow, but that’s how I was able to sneak out. Because they were so busy getting rid of the bodies.”

“Okay, but how do you know what happened?” Derek finally asks.

For the first time, Allison starts to look shaky. She glances down at her bowl. “Scott’s mom. Called me.”

There’s a loud scraping noise in the living room, and then, just as Allison turns around, Stiles tells Scott to come around the other side, the foldout doesn’t bend that way. Allison lets the spoon rattle against the bowl rim, startles, and then looks at her hands as if they don’t belong to her. Then just pushes the bowl away completely.

“She said my parents are fine, and that they’d been trying to keep this quiet and just deal with it outside of town but that wasn’t going to happen now, so I needed to know. So I should just listen to her and then find Scott and stay put till things got cleaned up,” Allison mutters. She presses her hands against the table, chewing her lip, and then pulls them back with an annoyed sound. Even Derek can see they’re still shaking. “I went to your house, but nobody was home, and then I finally tried Cora and she flipped out on me, like I was supposed to know, and told me to come straight back to the hospital with her and Laura, and then I got there and she said you and Scott and Stiles were here, and I’ve spent half the night driving around with my arm which _hurts_ and—”

They got her a glass of juice too. Derek pushes it towards her, and the scratch of its bottom against the table makes Allison look up. She frowns at him, breathing in like she’s going to launch a diatribe against him next, and then her lips twist back. At first he thinks she’s trying to smile, but they twist farther than that. He bites back his own frustrated noise because he never knows what to do with someone who’s crying, male or female, and Allison saves them both by taking a huge, draggy breath.

“Okay,” she says. She exhales. Closes her eyes for a second, and then opens them again. “Okay. Okay, honestly…I’m really worried about my parents because I didn’t see it, but I saw the blood on our car—Scott’s mom said it wasn’t theirs and to take it anyway, so it wouldn’t be suspicious, though that seems like the exact opp—anyway. I didn’t actually see anyone dying, but you look terrible.”

Derek resists the urge to look at himself. “I’m fine.”

Allison had been lifting her glass to her mouth, but she stops and frowns over it. Then puts it down. “Derek. You look like—you have this all down your neck—” she points on her own “—you look like somebody grabbed you on that side and squeezed—”

“That’s not what happened,” Derek snaps, and then grimaces and drops his face into his hand. “Look, I told you—”

“I know, and Cora said that too, but there’s no way that you weren’t involved in the fight,” Allison says incredulously. “You look like—”

Well, damn it, they’re just going to hear this. “This wasn’t—this happened afterward,” Derek mutters. “After we got here.”

For a second Allison stares at him. Her mouth opens and closes a little, and then she jerks forward while twisting her head to look over her shoulder, at the living room. She bites her lip, then turns back and reaches under the table to pull up her bag, which she opens and then gestures for Derek to look inside at the—oh, fuck, he knows what she’s thinking.

“It wasn’t a _fight_. They were passed out, and then Cora left to keep Laura under control,” Derek hisses. He glances at the living room too, even though Scott and Stiles aren’t sitting where he can see them, and then slouches down. Then pulls himself up, wincing, because that position’s actually worse. “Stiles pissed me off when we were in the bathroom—he finally woke up and I was just trying to wash off—and I make bad decisions sometimes, okay? But it wasn’t a—it wasn’t a fight.”

“I wasn’t going to blame you,” Allison says in an odd, careful tone. She doesn’t look so alarmed now, but she definitely feels sorry for him. “Look, I don’t know, okay? I’m not you, I’m not going to pretend I have any idea. Just—if this is because you actually _believe_ the stuff the people in town say about your family—and I know that includes my parents and I always thought it was—was just _bullshit_ —”

Derek snorts. He can’t help it, she just wraps her mouth so uncomfortably around the swear word.

Flushing, Allison gives him a brief smile, but she keeps talking with the same intensity. “I just know something about doing things just to prove things to other people, when they don’t even really care about the truth,” she says. She looks at him for another second, then drops her gaze, flushing harder. “Anyway, just…I’ve seen you with Cora, I know you’re a good person.”

“Are you sure you saw us?” Derek says, blinking. “Because that’s not what people usually get out of that.”

“Oh, well, she’s just like that back to you…which is what I like about her, I don’t have to guess her real opinion about things. Same with you,” Allison says, looking up again. Then she twists, embarrassed, and grabs at her juice so suddenly that it slops up out of the glass. She makes a face and pushes the glass away, then lets out an annoyed sigh when she sees she’s splashed her shirt. “Well, all right, so…I’ll drop it, I just wanted you to know.”

She gets up and goes to the sink to dab at her shirt. After a second, Derek gets up and gets some paper towels to clean up the table. The towel roll’s right next to the sink and she almost looks over as he steps up by her, then ducks her head.

“I just didn’t think Stiles was your type,” she mutters.

“He’s not, he just pissed me off,” Derek mutters back. “Like I said, bad decisions. If I’d been making good ones, I would’ve just gotten shot by your dad.”

Allison looks up. Her eyes are wide, and her shoulders flinch a little like she already regrets checking. And for a second Derek wonders if this is really much of a better decision, but then—

“He’s not going to,” Scott says from the other end of the kitchen, and then he stands there, embarrassed, one hand hovering over the counter where it’d been about to land before he noticed what he was interrupting. He bobs his head, starting to back out. “Sorry, I just heard and—Stiles was just pissed off too, if that—he’s not going to take it like—”

“Is that how it’s like for you too?” Derek says, and then the stifled noise makes him remember Allison. God, he’s…he really isn’t thinking any better than before he got fucked by two werewolves.

Jesus, Peter’s going to have a field day with this. Never mind college, Derek’ll be lucky if he gets let out of the house by himself.

Scott’s eyes flick between Derek and Allison, something a little more mournful than just disappointment in them, and then he sighs. “No. Stiles has been my best friend for years. He’s stuck by me for things you can’t even imagine, and it’s just…things are sort of different with werewolves. We’re pack, that changes what things mean to us.”

“Well, I don’t know about werewolves, whatever my grandfather knew. And I don’t even know exactly what happened here, but I just think if you really care about someone, you shouldn’t try to make things messy for them,” Allison says sharply. “And this does look like a mess.”

“He was mad at _me_ ,” Scott says, being sharp back, and he even takes a step into the kitchen. He stops the second Allison flinches—he hates the idea that she’s scared of him, that’s obvious—but he still doesn’t soften his tone. “That doesn’t make what he did the right thing, but I get why he did it. He’s not going to do it again, but I’m not going to let you come after him for what he did. And if you both don’t want anything to do with me now, I get that too, but he’s still going to be my friend.”

Allison inhales as if to say something to that, and then looks at Derek instead. Who doesn’t really see that there is anything to say. Scott seems pretty sure about the lines he’s drawing, even if, as the silence goes on, he starts to look as if he’s watching his dog drown. He still isn’t going to take any of it back.

Which is probably what Stiles was hoping for, Derek thinks, as Scott sighs again and starts to turn. “Why did you do it?” Derek asks, only half-thinking about it. “Who were you mad at?”

Scott twists abruptly. “Mad?” he says, like he doesn’t know what Derek means.

“You—you got in on it too,” Derek says, disbelieving. “Unless this is some kind of werewolf cop-out, because you seemed pretty aware of what you were doing when we were doing it.”

“Okay, you know…werewolves aren’t really that different from other people,” Scott says, as if he’s said this a lot and still believes it but knows it’s an uphill battle. “No, I knew what I was doing—”

“So why the fuck did you fuck me?” Derek snaps. “Was it to just get back at Stiles? Is that what the neck thing was about—”

“ _No_ ,” Scott says. “No, I—I wasn’t mad, all right, I just—I forgot—”

“What you were doing?” Allison says, like she doesn’t know for sure but needs to, and like she knows she’s not going to like knowing for sure.

Both Scott and Derek start. Derek had remembered she was there, but things like that don’t really matter when he’s dealing with somebody who just wants to pretend all the stupid things didn’t happen—he makes bad decisions but he fucking _admits_ to them. And if Scott thinks he’s just going to act like he wasn’t right there with Stiles, because some fucked-up werewolf whatever—

“I wasn’t trying to get back at _anyone_ , all right?” Scott suddenly spits out. “Yeah, I was there. I could have stopped Stiles—I could have stopped _you_ , but I didn’t want to. Because that’s why. Because I wanted it, except that’s the exact wrong thing and Stiles is right about that and you need to understand.”

“Understand what?” Derek says, still angry. “That it was fun but thanks, Stiles and I are good now? This is one of those fucked-up cheating kinks? If that’s it, at least he’s upfront about it.”

“It’s not a kink, Derek, it’s that I wanted you and I forgot I can’t do that, because that’s just going to get you killed,” Scott says, and just as suddenly he’s quiet and tired gain. He looks from Derek to Allison, and Derek can tell he’s deliberately giving them equal time. “We’re hunting somebody. We were just talking to you—to both of you—because it looked like somebody in your family might know where they are, but now it’s really complicated and they’re already going to be looking for you. So you don’t need to add me to that. I like you—I’d really like you to stay alive, all right? So I think we better just…not do this.” 

And then he turns and goes. Allison waits about a minute, and then she goes to the front of the kitchen. “He’s not here,” she says.

“I think I need to go home,” Derek says. He looks around the kitchen, then realizes he still has the towels in his hand. He throws them at the juice puddle on the table, then drags in a breath. “Fuck.”

“Do you…” Allison pauses when he looks at her “…ride?”

Derek exhales. Nods.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have this theory that Derek is much more naturally the middle child he was born as, and half his issues as alpha are because of that. Also he's both more fun and more complex to characterize when he's being moderately assholish with his siblings than as a tortured loner.
> 
> Scott, on the other hand, makes more sense when you look at his unrealistic principles as those of a teenager with good intentions who hasn't yet figured out the shades of gray. The show annoys me (on so many levels, see all my other endnotes) in part because they don't put his attitude in context of his age, what with all the wiser-beyond-his-years adulation that has adults kowtowing to him when they should be actually _advising_ and _mentoring_ him. But anyway, this universe is a bit of a darker take on that lack of context, where he has on those blinders out of some actual deep-seated emotional issues. 
> 
> Oh, and Stiles is going to get his airtime too. Can't be the S1 Peter without getting some layers in S2, and all that.


	6. Chapter 6

It’s a quiet ride back to Derek’s house. When they get there, amazingly, they’re the first and so Derek doesn’t immediately get out of the car. He just sits there and stares at his house and wonders what, exactly, getting out is going to do. Sure, his mother is going to kill him, and then Peter’s going to do something even worse, but that actually doesn’t seem to be the biggest problem right now.

“I’m going to make my parents drop this feud with your family,” Allison suddenly says. She’s giving Derek’s house a stare like she knows exactly what he’s feeling right now. “It’s stupid. It can’t possibly be more important than actual _werewolves_ who my grandfather somehow pissed off.”

“You think that has anything to do with this?” Derek says. “The feud? That started when your grandfather moved out, didn’t it?”

“Dad kicked him out, actually,” Allison says, looking thoughtful. “Yeah, maybe…but then shouldn’t _you_ know about werewolves?”

Well, Derek can never tell what Peter knows or doesn’t know—but that’s not right either. Peter does know about a lot of bizarre things, but if he’d had any idea about werewolves, he wouldn’t have just shoved a gun at Derek. He would have said what to avoid or what to use, because he might fuck with people but he doesn’t try to get his own family killed. And the way he and Derek’s mother have been acting, it’s just like they think it’s another bunch of people trying to blackmail them. 

“Stiles said it might just be Peter’s firm, and not him, and maybe…I don’t know.” Derek rubs at his face. “I don’t know. I’m going to have to tell Peter and Mom, maybe they can figure it out, but—there is no way that we’re staying out of it. Even if we wanted to.”

Allison sighs and sags in her seat, pulling a handful of hair up onto the top of her head, and then she lets it drop. “Yeah, I agree. I can’t just sit back anyway, knowing somebody’s trying to kill my family…you want me to come in? And tell what I know?”

Derek looks at her, surprised. “You want to talk to Mom and Peter?”

“I’m not expecting that they’re going to help my parents, I don’t think things have changed that much,” Allison says dryly. She sinks a little more, idly prodding the wheel with one finger. “But I think the more we know, the better, and as long as they don’t side with the people after my family, I’ll just take what I can get. They don’t have to tell me anything so long as they use what I say to help.”

“I can just tell you if we learn anything,” Derek says.

“Yeah?” Allison says, turning her head. She smiles at him, and then abruptly presses her lips together, as if she thinks she misstepped. “So, you know, if you want to try and…look less—I have concealer.”

Derek snorts. “Laura’s tried that on me, doesn’t work. Too much stubble, apparently.”

“She’s tried that already?” Allison says.

“I make bad decisions sometimes,” Derek says. Then grimaces. “Not—not usually _that_ kind. More like fights in—I’m home from college because I punched up someone for cheating at poker.”

“Yeah, Cora told me,” Allison says.

“She _what_ —” Derek starts, and Allison leans over and kisses him.

It’s a quick touch, and then she leans back. Derek puts his hand up into her hair and she stops, then moves forward again, letting him run his tongue along her lip. Her tongue flicks out, then in and over his teeth as he twists the rest of his body around to face her.

“Said two-by-four, actually,” she says, breathless, as her hand slides along his jaw.

“That was after he pulled a knife on me,” Derek mutters.

“Oh, makes sense,” she says, and before she kisses him this time, she hikes herself behind the gearshift between them.

“I am both delighted and appalled by the complete lack of mainstream morality in this car,” says Stiles from the backseat. He watches them yelp and break apart, and then holds up Allison’s bag where all the weapons are when Derek makes to reach around towards him. Derek pulls back and Stiles grins. “Okay, before you shoot me—”

Allison smacks her hands against the headrest. “Get out of my car!”

“Nope, not before you listen to me, because I realize I’m the villain of this story here, but also?” Stiles says, dropping the bag beside him. “I am officially not-interested in Derek here.”

“Great. Get out,” Derek says.

Stiles stops smiling and his eyes redden, and for a second Derek remembers what he’d looked like as a werewolf. How much muscle mass, and how tall.

“I’m trying to keep us alive, people,” Stiles says flatly. “My boy, Scott, he’s really lovely, but this thing where he thinks it’s all going to end with him taking on his father solo—”

Derek sits down and bites down on his lip before he says anything.

Stiles’ eyes flick to him and the man had been counting on that, and Derek has only ever wanted to kill one other person this badly before. From the way Stiles shrugs and leans back, he’d been counting on that too. “Yeah, so his father was a werewolf too, and we thought he was dead but now we’re pretty sure he isn’t, and he’s ruined Scott’s life and Scott’s mom’s life and he got my mom killed and basically, Scott thinks if he’s going to save the world, he’s got to kill his father by himself. My mission is to _not_ let him do that. Because if he does, he’s not coming back from that one. So…you two can tell Scott to fuck off and shack up with each other, and sure, you’ll be on my offensive eyesores list, but you won’t be on my kill list if you _don’t enable Scott_. Okay? Okay! Bye.”

And then Derek blinks and Stiles isn’t there but the car is rocking slightly from the door being slammed. Derek looks up through the back windshield, and then twists around and gets out of the car and looks again, even though he knows he’s not going to see the guy.

“Does he actually believe that?” Allison says, almost spitting with disbelief.

“Probably,” Derek mutters. “He reminds me of Peter. Same thing about telling you to not fuck up his plans when people just don’t act like his plans.”

Allison lets out a sarcastic little giggle, then looks over at Derek. The annoyed humor drains out of her face. She puts her hand on top of the car, then pats down once before shutting her door and coming around to his side.

“I can see what he means about Scott, though,” Allison says slowly. She looks up at Derek, then moves a little closer. Her hand goes out and touches Derek’s wrist on the bruising; he presses his lips together, but when she moves her hand up to his shoulder, he puts his on her waist. “So, um, when you said you were pissed at Stiles, but—” 

Derek lifts his fingers but doesn’t take his whole hand off her. “Is this where you ask me whether I’m okay again?”

“I was going to go with whether when you say you ‘sometimes’ make bad decisions, if that included the Scott part or not,” Allison says. She doesn’t move her hands either, but she’s clearly not about to turn this into something—some kind of distraction. She does, however, want to see his face; when he starts to glance away, she twists slightly so that their eyes are still locked. “Because when I walked in with Stiles, it looked like you two—”

“He’s in some kind of crazy war with his own father. Also, his best friend is _Stiles_ , and I know I’m not always the greatest at these kinds of things, but I think that back there he was telling me the next time we fuck, I’m going to die,” Derek says, and then ducks his head, pressing his lips together. Then he jerks his head back and stares at her. “Anyway, what, are _you_ still interested? Your type’s homicidal werewolf?”

“More like guys who think they have to cross the line to protect their family and _nobody’s_ gonna notice all these threats magically disappearing,” Allison says. She’s picked up on his flinch, she can tell it’s not just about Scott, and he can tell the exact moment where she decides to put off asking him about it. “And yeah, he did pretty much say that.”

Derek blows his breath out. Allison catches his eye, looking sympathetic, and somehow doing it in a way that doesn’t get under his skin. Instead he finds the corners of his mouth twitching, and then she goes ahead and just gives him the disbelieving grin he isn’t letting himself have.

“He is very cute, and the whole determined-hero thing does work for him,” Allison says. “On the other hand, I love how he just assumes he can make our choices for us, and they’ll automatically be better than letting you and Stiles hate-sex each other.”

“Your type, huh,” Derek says.

Allison’s smile dents a little as she shrugs. “I…yeah? I don’t know,” she says after a moment. “I just have had a lot to deal with in the, I don’t know, last twenty-four hours? But I just—I don’t want to pick something as important like who I care about like _this_ , if that makes sense. Because I just…I just think, with all the things we can do these days, there’s got to be a better way. So—um, so what do you think?”

So Derek makes bad decisions, and not sometimes. A lot, honestly. And right now…right now, he wants his family safe and he also wants certain other things, which he probably can’t get without fucking up. He’s learned enough from past mistakes to realize that—learned he can’t do it on his own.

“He’s definitely going to get himself killed,” Derek finally says.

“I think he’s also not going to keep us out of it. I mean, I believe him when he says he’ll try, but already it’s just…werewolves and my grandfather and who knows about your family,” Allison says, a little exasperation leaking into her tone. Her gaze sharpens again when Derek twitches on ‘your family,’ and once again, she doesn’t follow up. She does move her hand, letting it slide lower while curling the fingers more, so it feels like she’s actually wrapping herself closer. Then she lifts her other hand and lays it just along the edge of the sorest part of Derek’s neck. “We’re going to have to deal with this anyway. Maybe that’s a bad choice, but I just don’t think it’s a choice we can avoid.”

“And since we have to, might as well?” Derek says.

Allison purses her lips, annoyed, and then shakes her head. “Derek, I just want to know because if you and him are something to deal with too—well, I just want to know. I’m—I really, _really_ don’t agree with some of the decision-making that happened tonight, but I like you, and I _think_ I’d be unhappy if Scott died. So—”

“So if he died, that’d piss me off,” Derek says. He pauses. “I honestly don’t know where that’s going to go.”

“Well, okay. That’s pretty much all I wanted to know,” Allison says.

They sit there and contemplate that. She breathes in, out, in, and he realizes he’d been mimicking her. He stops and runs his hand through his hair, and then sees something out of the corner of his eye—he turns and her hands move and he bends and kisses her. They stop, then shift back up, and then she twists to move her bandaged arm out from between them as he pulls his around her waist. It hurts, honestly, and he probably shouldn’t be doing this, for a lot of reasons besides that it hurts, but…he does. Like he said with the decisions.

“You know,” she says a moment later, when they’ve both flinched and tried to power through a few times. “Honestly? I also think we can do a better job here. If we knew more, and if our families stopped…okay, so I don’t know anything about the supernatural right now, but still. Why meet at a _golf course_? Why not—inside, at least? Somewhere you can control the exits?”

“No idea,” Derek says, and takes her hand and pulls her towards his house. “Come on, Peter was looking into things. Let’s see if he left any of it lying around, while we’re waiting for my family to show up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm ignoring the whole a mere scratch from an alpha can turn you, since the show basically just leaned on that to retcon Kate Argent's death (otherwise why just her and not all the other people alpha!Peter mauled? It's not like Lydia was the only one who didn't immediately die). So no, Derek's not going to turn.


End file.
